The Ends of the Earth and the Depths of our Souls

We are a movement of Missionaries

Worked hard on this this spring, identity as missionaries, as priests sent to mediate between God and humanity.

We are missionaries, sent specificially to our city, to this place in this season to be an outpost of the kingdom....livng the way of Jesus and proclaiming to our neighbors that Jesus is Lord, Repent and Believe....experieince freedom, healing and power in God’s community.

We are on a mission field, about 7% of our city is in a church this weekend. it’s about saturation, re-evangelizing a generation that rejected the false-religion of Christian-nationalism, Christian Dominionism, half-hearted religion, playing church, special privileges for clergy, spiritual abuse, spiritual neglect and authoritarian non-sense.

There’s a lot of work to do at home…but there is a breadth and depth of calling that i want to bring our attention to with our 18th of 19 values.

UNREACHED, UNENGAGED, AND FRONTIER PEOPLES

While we understand that our most transforming ministry will take place among our own demographics and geographically located in our own city, we commit ourselves to the mission of God to reach the whole world. We believe that Jesus came as the savior, not of one people group but of all peoples. We value the peoples of the world because we believe that God is a global God who made all of humanity and desires to redeem every unique people group. We assume responsibility for the whole world, not because we believe we can reach it alone, but because we accept the mandate of the Great Commission and the heart of God to love and sacrifice for the discipleship of each people group. We accept this apostolic mandate to send and be sent into every part of the world and our place in partnership with the global church. We also recognize that not everyone has equal access to the Gospel and there is therefore a level of urgency to bring the Gospel to those peoples who have never heard. Therefore we will prioritize reaching frontier peoples by advocating, interceding for, and sending missionaries and even entire microchurches to frontier peoples so that they might have a lasting and indigenous church planting movement as well.

I think very few would argue with this value, but some of you are feeling all the tension of here vs there....shouldn’t I invest where I live and let someone else take care over there? I don’t even know those people, how can I help them?

Aren’t there people closer who should help?

Don’t we have lots of lost people there.....

There are....that is why we are going to start with taking the gospel where it will make the most difference:

The Ends of the Earth and Depths of our souls

We will talk the second half of today about reaching the ends of the earth with the gospel…but we wanted to start closer to home....not our neighborhoods..not our families...but our souls.

Story of Tim, my formation in McDonald on Overland

-family systems

-the engines of dysfunction that steered my life

-unformed places in my soul

-malformed places in my soul

-hurt places in my soul

-Got to be a guinea pig as Tim worked out what he was doing

-RH and our team is there in a large part to the ministry of the Rule’s and we want to honor them and thank them for their ongoing work

Invite Tim to Share

Tavita Shares

Laura Closes up

As we are doing this work of taking the gospel to the deepest recesses of our souls, we have this dual mission, to take it to the farthest ends of the earth…to bring the healing power of the gospel to a broken world.

There will always be a drive to care for our own…to be generous to those closest to us…out of self-interest. If my city experiences spiritual revival we get the benefits of....health, prosperity, wisdom, shared experience

But God is really clear on this point so I’m going to overwhelm you with a little evidence right now.

(Ps 22:27, “The whole earth will acknowledge the Lord and return to him. All the families of the nations will bow down before him.”

Matt 24:14, “And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come.”

Jn 3:16-17, ““For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.”

Jn 4:42, “Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not just because of what you told us, but because we have heard him ourselves. Now we know that he is indeed the Savior of the world.””

Jn 12:46-47, “I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark. I will not judge those who hear me but don’t obey me, for I have come to save the world and not to judge it.”

Rom 5:18, “Yes, Adam’s one sin brings condemnation for everyone, but Christ’s one act of righteousness brings a right relationship with God and new life for everyone.”

2 Cor 5:19, “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation.”

1 Jn 2:2, “He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world.”

Rev 14:6 “And I saw another angel flying through the sky, carrying the eternal Good News to proclaim to the people who belong to this world—to every nation, tribe, language, and people.”

I wanted to overwhelm you with the sheer volume of passages that drive home this point......Jesus was doing something radically different that was seen as a radical departure from the Judaism of the first century.

This doesn’t get enough press....

-There was no universal religion before Christianity

-every ancient world power tried to assert the dominance of their God’s, not through evangelism but through power

-War was an invention of the gods to show their comparative strength

-kings and queens would co-opt religion as a way to white wash their

-They invented evangelism (weakness rather than empire)

-no-name sect of a powerless people, with no place in the empire of Roman would usurp the power of Rome, and outlast the empire and hundreds of others.

-in those first centuries Jesus followers would go to Northern Europe, India and even southern Africa and create Communities of Christ followers that would last unbroken for 2000 years.

-The power of the gospel of Jesus is that it is truly universal.

-It has worked in every planet and continent on earth.

-And it is not just for those who opt in. Jesus came proclaiming repent, the kingdom of God is at hand…this is a warning to the world and an invitation....

-the Kingdom is advancing like yeast through bread through history

-Jesus is the creator king of all the universe

-He will reign past the history of this world

-Those who reject him will not enjoy the salvation from death, invitation to kingdom flourishing and the power to heal our brokenness.....and this is why we are on mission together as a family

-We must give our lives to ensure that our friends and family, neighbors....and those on the other side of the planet know that Jesus is king, He is good, He is coming and you can enjoy His kingdom right now.

So we look around the world and we ask, who doesn’t know....and who has no chance of knowing if we don’t ask now....and there are a lot of places.

As we have launched RH we started with a different way of thinking about mission:

not here vs there…but the same work everywhere

not to a message…but to the kingdom community, belonging (disciple-making rather than proclamation)

Its coming alongside what God is already doing around the world and finding our place in it. (we are not saviors but merely servants)

Partnership rather than doing it on our own.

How we have vetted our partnerships:

Relationship,

Passion,

Church Planting,

training national believers

(also how we work with church planters in the U.S.)

It’s about presence and saturation

We do it because it was a gift to us, we give it away to others

You follow Jesus because other people gave their lives....our roles is to pass it on to the next generation and those places without knowledge or access.....

We can’t be everywhere but we’ll do for few that we wish we could do everywhere.

Focus on places of highest need/movement ratios

Give

Go

Support

Pray

Theks in Papua New Guinea

-Andrew Long’s Sister

-We got to be a part of His story, and see God work through the passionate prayers of His sister.

-Translation, church planting, training nationals

-Got to PNG this May

Thek Prayers:

Pray for the Maliyali people who are hearing God’s Word for the first time in their own language! Pray they would continue to receive the truths of God’s Word.

Pray for health and safety on our long bus and canoe ride, as well as our 12-hour hike! Pray God would use the conference to further build up the body of Christ in the Ramu Valley area.

Pray for our continued language learning.

Pray for the continued strengthening of our walks with the Lord as well as our marriage.

Please continue to pray that God would guide us as we continue to get to know other families and potential teammates we may one day partner with in going into a tribal location.

Madhu’s in Bangladesh

-Worked in campus ministry with Cru for 15-20 years

-realize they need to step out with assist of National leaders to launch church planting movement

-Huge opportunity in villages, no one to go (costs $250 per month)

-they have 90 pastors ready to step out

-they are working on sustainable agriculture as a way to self-fund the ministry

-89% Muslim

-10% Hindu

-Less than 1% Buddhist

-Less than 1% Christian

-85k villages in Bangladesh, 70k no church at all

-165M people

-Literacy Rate only 75% means that 41M people can’t read

-Average Income just $6000 per year

-only 60M are employed

-inflation 9%

-threats and violence for their people

Coopers in Kuwait

Relationship: Friendship

among the nations (SE asians)

Among the Kuwaitis (love americans)

Church planter training hub

Cooper prayers: …which leads me to the one prayer request amidst all of the items of praise and thanksgiving. We’re running pretty low on steam. Pray for wisdom. Pray for discernment. Pray for energy. Pray for the humility to bring alongside others who can help, consistently.

Martins in The Kingdom

No Pic

Ministry training center in heart of the Kingdom

YWAM

Tip of the spear,

Business As Mission

Pavlishes - AIA Boise State

Walters - Cru at University of Idaho

Michalowskis - Intervarsity Southern Idaho

Other Local/National Partnerships:

-Young Life Boise

-Launch Pad

-City Network

-New Thing

-Ecclesia

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Go

Support

Pray

Looking at an opportunity to go visit some of our partnerships around the world and build a team of folks to help support and pray for our missionary partners here and around the world. Let me know where God is stirring your heart to serve/partner.