We are excited to announce dates for the next gathering for The Sending Church Roundtable. For those who attended the 2011 Roundtable, be looking for a letter for follow-up that will help in our 2012 planning. We are excited to receive your ideas and suggestions as we design what we believe will be another amazing time to dream, strategize and learn how the church and send the church. If you attended last year, we hope you will begin calendaring and planning to come along with other key leaders from your church. If you did not attend last year and would like to be included in the invitation process, please sent us a message. So, here are the details:

• Date: September 10-11, 2012
• Location: LifePoint Church, Smyrna, TN
• Contact Info

If you would like to catch-up on the details or conversations from the 2011 Sending Church Roundtable, you can:

1. Read Summaries of the conversations and topics
2. Review the Info and Details

Jason Howard of Stonecreek Church led our discussion on Accountability and Connection with those we have sent from our churches.

In a matrix, we have a high trust / low trust vertical with a low control / high control horizontal. As people were at or moved toward a high trust, high control quadrant, our leadership became more positive on working with those people or organization.

Caleb Crider on accountability:

• Resentment makes effective accountability impossible. Relationship is key! Boxes to check make it virtually impossible to have effective accountability.
• Often accountability is best not done by the pastor, but by a close friend.

Pat Hood, Senior Pastor of LifePoint Church, shared on Ongoing Support (Re-member Care) for our seventh round of discussion during the Sending Church Roundtable.

We want to care before they get there. It helps us send out healthier people.

Some things the senior pastor cannot delegate. This is true of caring for team leaders on a regular basis. I go to each of our spots at least twice a year.

We also send short-term teams and individuals to go and be with these people. It is best for us to go in smaller groups. We have business persons traveling and families vacationing to spend time with and bless our teams.

I don’t go with our mission teams to these locations because I will meet with each family unit and other leaders in town that they want me to meet with.

These things have to be driven by the senior pastor. He has to drive it from the pulpit or it won’t get done. I try to keep mentioning our teams to our congregation.

Our small groups adopt a team or a family. We have a point person for each initiative. This person helps keep these guys in front of our people.

When our people return home, we provide mission housing and help in every way we possibly can. Also, we provide professional marriage counseling as needed, provide an annual retreat, etc.

Larry McCrary on member care for the sending church

This is the story of Epaphroditus. He is the church’s messenger, the minister to his needs.

You may need to outsource some of this. There is professional counseling available for those that need it.

Great to hear from the church “what are your needs?” It is hard for a missionary to feel like they are asking for something.

Snail mail packages are meaningful. They show that someone really cares.

Nathan Sloan from Sojourn in Louisville is sharing about diversifying approaches to sending people.

When the people that are being called to be sent don’t fit old patterns, what do we do? We think differently.

It would be easy to have a critical spirit, but that’s not what we are to be about.

Our first family that we sent out was with our church from the beginning. We didn’t send him well. As things began to explode there, we started to send teams and other short-term personnel to help them. This has developed into a regional partnership.

Our church is all about teams. Finding the right people on the ground and then working with them to develop healthy teams.

Starting to look more into southern France to place 3 to 5 couples that are business persons. Looking to establish a coffee shop and roastery. This would help fund their presence.

Getting behind Steve Timmis to see his network develop throughout western Europe to plant churches.

Also in partnership with Crowded House where we will swap our interns.

Want to highlight that we can send our people locally. This cross-cultural approach can be intimidating. 10% of our city is immigrants with some groups not having a single believer. We have identified those groups that do not have a church among their people to send our guys out to.

Our website for international missions. International.sojournchurch.com

Caleb sharing about professionals that quit their job to be full time missionaries to go and work like crazy go set up platforms to share the gospel.

Sometimes we can do with less creativity and take who we are and what we do to the mission field. Need to move from seeing mission as full-time to seeing it as part-time or shared-time or even to a virtual presence.

What if through clear communication like an info graphic we can help teachers and trade guys see how they can use their skills and career.

Partnership—Who Do you Work with at Home and on the Field?

Joe Parnell with Mobberly Baptist Church launched a discussion about partnership and the role it plays in their church planting around the world.

They have planted in Anchorage, planting in Vancouver and have just relocated a couple to the UK to plant.

They are looking to partner with people and open to many things though there are theological barriers to close partnership.

In Malawi, they saw 5 churches planted in a one week trip. All still functioning with avg of 100 in attendance. Yet in other places like Romania, they have seen the Church Planting process to be very slow.

When going into a new place, the first thing they look to do is meet and bless IMB people. After that, they are open to looking to partner with those that are theologically similar.

The way you communicate with and motivate your people is through story-telling. Joe’s favorite part of his job is weekly writing a story for his people to see how God is working.

Important to identify what missionaries are there that would be good to partner with.

Good to partner with an association if they are helpful, but when not, they press on anyway. Some pastors will hate you for planting in their area, but you love them and move forward.

Larry McCrary shared about partnership from Scripture and his experience.

Paul was thankful for the Philippian church for their ongoing church. There was longevity in the partnership.

Partnership is mutual. It involves high levels of trust. Respect is essential. Partners believe in one another.

An important part of partnership is being invited in.

Identify partnership needs to know what types of partnerships to pursue.

Look for partners in your own context. God is doing something in your church. Find those partners.

Look for existing networks like SkyBridgeCommunity.net or BAMmatch.

Internationalization of missions is key to what God is doing in many parts of the world.

Matt Elkins with The Village Church shares about how they do selection for those to send out. Those that aren’t doing it here aren’t likely to be doing it there. They don’t send those out.

There are “not yets” that aren’t living a full gospel-centered life now, they are not ready to go yet.

Jason Bourne missionaries and escapism doesn’t make for healthy mission expectations.

Caleb shared that mobilization is a military term and perhaps not the best method of setting realistic expectations.

Some churches expect those that join their church expect their people to view themselves as missionaries.

If everything is mission, then nothing is.

There is often a discrepancy between the assessment issues for a mission agency vs for a church. There are different issues that impact this.

Don’t just take assessment criteria from an existing mission process or organization. Seek this out in Scripture.

The third conversation of the Sending Church Roundtable looks at how we engage on the mission field. The conversation was led by Mike Wall for Henderson Hills Baptist Church of Edmond, OK.

When we first got involved in Barcelona, we had to learn the history and culture of the city and people.

Last July, we were vacationing in Belize and met some Catalan girls (from Barcelona). Next month, we’re having dinner with them in their homes in Barcelona.

The third conversation for the Sending Church Roundtable comes from Mike Wall of Henderson Hills Baptist Church in

Before we go overseas, we ask everyone on the trip to forget everything they think they know about people and mission.

We’re not afraid to share our struggles with the people to whom we’re ministering. My friend in Barcelona and I talked about how cancer has affected our families and lives. This was a powerful connection.

I was hanging out in my favorite coffee bar in the Raval district in Barcelona. I took the Bible and the Spanish book “the Alchemist.” This led us to several good conversations and opportunities to share my faith.

We try t expose people to us as a group. They see Jesus most in our loving interactions with one another.

We take the same paths, we try to become regulars and get to know people.

We try to be still. Even in the midst of a big city, we depend on Spiritual time with God.

We listen ( they call us terrorists) and respect the culture. We wear what they wear, and talk about what they’re talking about.

Take prayer intercessors. They tend to strange folk, but they go ahead of sand impact our strategy.

Prayer walking is success. So is sowing seeds, building relationships, and having conversations.

Welcome to the first session and topic of the 2011 Sending Church Roundtable. Throughout the day we will be posting highlights from the 9 presenters and the dialogue that forms. We encourage you to check back and look through the many pieces of posted here from our Roundtable discussions.

Jason Dukes of Westpoint Church in Orlando, FL talking starting the day by talking about being both Spirit Led AND Strategic. Jason’s talking points:

1. Pray.
2. Value and Validate the people you equip.
3. Equip
   1. Celebrate when people get on mission.
   2. Get specific about how you’re equipping your people to plant the gospel.
4. Investigate and Relate. Rather than declare vision and rally people to go, you’re the Gatorade-giver, the resourcer and encourager for people to follow what God has told them.
5. Sow for the Sending — cultivate for the contextual relationships
6. Sow for the Specific Sending
7. Start Sending

Instead, Americans love to develop strategies before forming relationships.

In Orlando, they require would-be church planters to do one- year internships before they get the ok to plant a church.

Now, Westpoint church is sending families to Montreal.

Roundtable discussion: “What are the implications if the will of God is sought by the pastor, the mission pastor, key leaders, the whole church staff, or individuals?

• What are some ways to lead your church to seek God’s will for your church on mission?
• When the church leadership casts vision, the whole church gets on board. When it’s left to the individual, we get spread out.
• There may be a tension between what the leaders feel led to do and what the individuals feel led to do.

The Sending Church story is not a story from bad to good, but from good to better. It is a story of a rethink in missions where the bride of Christ humbly takes ownership of the Great Commission—the Commission that Jesus gave her to be about. In a sense, this is a story of the Proverbs 31 woman that takes responsibility for caring for those she loves and has in her charge. Here the bride takes ownership of the command she has to be a blessing to others by her own hand.

This is your story and the story of the one next to you. It is the story that already has been and yet is alive again today. The unfolding of this story will continue until the bridegroom returns.

The vignettes contained here are from different gatherings across the country involved in cities and nations around the world. Together these glimpses begin to comprise a holistic representation of the fuller body of Christ being a blessing to the nations—being the church on His mission.

- Naturally, the sending church story begins with the Most High who is the missionary God. He is the One who sends the church out. It was His plan, not her own.

- He is revealing His will to the church regarding to whom she should go through prayer and in providential encounters with peoples and places in the grocery store, through internet research and even television programs like National Geographic. He speaks, she responds. He directs. She goes.

- The church is selecting those that she would send out. These are good, Spirit-filled men, women and families that are already faithful in making disciples where they are. She is sending out her best leaders who are simultaneously her most humble servants.

- These sent ones are going as ambassadors that are living by faith through the sacrifices of the sending ones and / or as tentmakers working as teachers, businesspersons, freelancers and restaurateurs. While the tentmakers prepare to go, the sending church is commissioning some direct from her own fold while adopting some that do not have people praying and caring for them from their hometown due to a lack of vision.

- Through innovative as well as slice of the budget fund-raising, the sending church is resourcing church planting among the nations through different leaders including the lives of addicts that are being transformed and taking the love of Christ to others that are currently without hope. She is reexamining her budget and expectations with a willingness to reallocate financial resources toward advancing the gospel as she walks by faith.

- The sending church is holding the ropes for those she sends out by taking ownership of administrative functions in order to reduce or eliminate extraneous costs as well as to free up time to enable the sent ones to focus on mission.

- She is caring for and holding accountable those she sends out by having top leadership in the states in frequent, direct communication with those living in another country as well as stepping in to provide counsel and retreat in times of high stress and conflict. The church provides tangible remember care by sending a dear friend or family member to go to the field for a season to provide a taste of home and an expression of love that gives much needed hugs and a trusted listening ear over long cups of coffee. Baby sitting and dates are at times a desperately needed bonus that she is all too happy to provide.

- The sending church is seriously rethinking what a lifestyle of mission looks like for the disciples that comprise her. She is having her disciples, every one of her disciples have some contact or direct involvement with the people she is engaging.

- She is taking a copious list of mission projects scattered around the world and replacing it with the people or peoples to whom she is called so that she can see prayer and people mobilized for mission—so that people will be passionate about those to whom the Spirit is sending her to bless.

- She is hosting collegiates from her people group to study as exchange students while living in the homes and being a part of the families of faithful disciples.

- The sending church is rewiring her corporate worship times to pray for and rejoice as the stories are told of God’s faithfulness as he works among the community and the nations. In addition to seeking to continue to support the sent ones in their development and walk with God, the sending church is learning from the sent ones as they Skype in to teach the body in small groups and corporate worship.

- She is open to doing away with puppets when and where appropriate to drink coffee among the nationals and wait and act according to the Spirit’s prompting—seeking to employ his strategy while loosening her grip on her own.

- The sending church is working with others in any way possible that helps advance the gospel among those to whom she is called. These partnerships include multiple expressions of the body of Christ in the U.S. and beyond working together, cooperating with mission agencies and learning from national partners.

- She is training those she is sending out in pre-field intense sessions as well as ongoing training and coaching once living among those to whom she is sent.

- The sending church is about seeing disciples made among those she has been sent to. Where she is making disciples, she is seeing churches birthed. She is seeing the Kingdom of God advance among the nations.

The sent and sending God called his bride to be a sent and sending church. The story has begun. What it will look like 10 years from now is unclear. How will you influence it?