Missionary Adoption Program, 2011
Purpose: MAP is a program to honor Christ by obeying His mandate to make disciples of all nations. We can do that at Crossgate by being radical senders to those who go, only if we each understand the vision and purpose of at least one of our missionaries, and by involving ourselves in their ministry and work by getting to know him/her/them and regularly updating our knowledge of them, their ministry, environment and needs, physically, emotionally and spiritually and financially and lifting them up in prayer.
Vision: Prayer for the missionary and family is the primary way we can “hold the rope” our missionary needs to keep him/her connected to the sending, praying, partnering congregation. In order to do this regularly we need to have a mechanism to encourage each other to pray separately and corporately for the various needs of each missionary family and identifying with them more fully.
In the past the focus group has not been used as a primary tool for promoting prayer and support for our missionaries. However the Mission Team has been led to view the home churches as a natural place and time for such activity in view of the fact that many of Paul’s letters were either written to home churches or mentioned home churches or were circulated to home churches. As this fact clearly led to deep involvement with prayer and financial support for Paul and other missionaries by the early home churches, our home churches therefore should be likewise involved.
The MAP team leaders will be asked to involve others in their focus group in the following suggested labors of love:
a) Be a part of communicating in such a way that the missionary knows you are committed to be an advocate for them and their needs. The communicator coordinates information from the missionaries and informs the Map team (the focus groups) and the congregation utilizing such things as (i) e-mails, (ii) mission spotlight during the Sunday service (possibly on most Sundays) (iii) Crossgate newsletter (iv) Crossgate website, (v) prayer chain (vi) posters and displays, (vii) slide and video presentations and (viii) visits by missionaries.
b) Teaching the team about the ministry and the family.
c) Learning the local religion, culture and the difficulties the spiritual environment produces in spreading the Gospel.
d) A praying leader that will understand the prayer needs of a typical missionary family and learning the spiritual warfare that the missionary is involved in, and helping the fellowship and congregation know how to pray for them.
Our prayer is that this change will lead to both broader and deeper involvement by a much larger membership of Crossgate, leading to more power in the prayers we lift up for our missionaries and more communication about our missionaries and their joys, needs and difficulties.
We are asking each focus group to coordinate their MAP leader or leaders to involve others in their group, using the suggestions noted in paragraph 4 to spread the work load and involve more people.
The session has asked that the focus groups put into practice some of the things we have learned from the Praying study by J. I. Packer by focusing our praying each week on specific areas of prayer, such as praise, thanksgiving, intercession, Kingdom praying, or Missions. In this way we will, as a church, grow in grace and more fully glorify the God we love and serve.
The Mission Team asks you to pray diligently for God’s purposes to be accomplished through His plans for Missionary Adoption. We pray that each of you in turn will do your best to commit yourself to what God is asking you to do in fulfilling His Great Commission.