Roundtable Topics

Monday evening’s dinner and program will be an introduction to Sending Church with stories from current Sending Church initiatives and experiences. Tuesday Roundtable sessions will be succinct presentations followed by collaborative discussions designed to keep information fast-paced, free-flowing and formative to every leader in the room. Presentations will be made by current practitioners for learning strategies of missions engagement followed by facilitation by Upstream Collective staff.

Obviously in such a short amount of time we cannot cover every topic relevant to sending workers from our churches but we do hope we can take on the ones listed below. We want this to be the start of a Sending Church conversation.

1. Being Strategic and Spirit Led
When we think like missionaries, it affects every decision we make through the entire process of raising up, sending out, and maintaining our people on the mission field (both at home and abroad). We’ll discuss how our churches can follow the Holy Spirit on mission while maintaining unity and showing every member how they fit into the plan.

2. What Are the Critical Training Components for a Team?
Missionary training tends to focus on the major things: evangelism, church planting, money, and culture. Statistically, it isn’t terrorism, politics, or a lack of resources that will ruin your efforts; it’s loneliness, team conflict, and moral failure. Appropriate and timely training can help us guard against these subtle but pervasive pitfalls.

3. What Does Engagement Look Like on the Field?
Hint: if it looks exactly like what we’re doing back home, something is wrong. Mission is closing the gap between the Kingdom of God and the present spiritual reality. Our job is to contextualize the gospel so that people don’t have to leave their own cultures in order to understand it. But we must be careful of the two extremes: watering down the message (syncretism), and importing a foreign culture (obscurantism).

4. The Selection Process for Sending a Worker or Team?
The local church is God’s mechanism for raising up and sending out missionaries. Let’s explore what that process can and should look like. How can we identify those who are prepared for mission? What are some red flags to watch out for? What are the criteria for service? How can we maintain accountability along the way?

5. Partnership — Who Do You Work with at Home and on the Field?
Sometimes, the most difficult part about mission is working with other believers. We’ll explore what makes for a good partnership with nationals, mission groups, and even non-Christians. We’ll outline healthy expectations, best practices, and graceful ways to move on when necessary.

6. Diversifying Approaches to Sending People
Let’s put our heads together and allow for some creativity. The old model of sending fully funded, seminary-trained, professional missionaries isn’t sustainable. We need all of God’s people to find where they fit into God’s mission, and our obedience is going to take innovation, courage, and new thinking. We’ll look at some new sending models that help regular Christians move into redemptive relationships with unbelieveing people from all nations.

7. Ongoing Support to Your Workers (Re-member Care)
Our pastoral care cannot be limited to those of our people who can show up every Sunday. We’ve got to provide ongoing love, support, encouragement, training, and accountability for the missionaries we send out. We want to discuss the challenges to maintaining people on the field, and we’ll highlight best practices for taking care of those we send out.

8. Accountability on the Field with Your Workers
Accountability isn’t all correction and discipline; missionaries need to be able to report to their sending churches in areas of finances, family relationships, emotional well-being, spiritual health, and ministry progress. This becomes increasingly difficult the more people we have on the field. How can our churches provide feedback loops for our people on the front lines without turning to impersonal programs or adding layers of management?

9. Administration Back home — Sharing the Burden
Mission is expensive. Never mind the hard costs, like travel and housing and costs of living, consider the soft costs: insurance, training, administrative support. It all adds up. Surely, there must be a way for our churches to share the load and support one another using the gifts, experiences, and resources God has blessed us with. It’s not about money; it’s about unity, stewardship, and cooperation.