Mission Strategies

On my last post I wrote about three streams that in my opionion summarize to a great extent the culture here in Europe. I want to talk about this some more today. I believe that those same streams exist in North America today. How will the church in North American navigate through such water?

I like jumping onto websites of churches and reading how they approach missions. It seems that many churches take the Acts 1:8 passage and segment their missions into - Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the uttermosts parts of the earth. They will then find mission leaders to lead out in each of those areas and develop mission strategies for such. I am not casting judgement on this for it is one way to approach the strategy. My fear is that it casts missions into mini-compartments and does not approach the Great Commission as a whole. Whether you read demograhic studies, internet or the Sunday paper you can see that the world is in the USA. I sometimes hear of churches who get fired up about taking a mission trip to one of those uttermost places ministering to people of another faith. This is not a bad thing. What I am curious about do they have the same excitement with people of a different faith who live next door to them or in another part of the city? How are they being salt and light to people who are different from them in their own location?