S1-E51 | Everyday Eurasia | Joshua Haun

Hallo en welkom bij de Everyday Eurasia Podcast. Inspiring Fate voor Everyday. Each day we on a journey with Jesus in our churches, our homes, our workplaces en in so many different places around the world. Is it beautiful that no matter where we are, we can walk with Him every single day. Jesus is the one who connects us all and stands at the very center of our lives, day after day. Through this podcast, you'll hear voices from across the region, sharing devotionals that reminds us of God's presence in our everyday moments. This week on the Everyday Eurasia Podcast, we are grateful to be joined by Pastor Joshua Ham. Joshua and his wife Katie have been serving for the past four years as pastors and church planters with the church of the nursery in Sofia, Bulgaria. Throughout this week, Joshua will be reflecting with us on the topic of church planting. Why does church planting still matter with so many churches already around the world? What makes this work so important today? As we listen together this week, Joshua will help us explore these questions and discover God's heart behind planting new churches. Hello again. My name is Joshua Ham and I'm a church planter and pastor serving in Sofia, Bulgaria. We are on a journey together in church planting and today we're going to talk a bit about planting missional churches. I think we all know that being a holy people and a missional people go together because holy love is defined by Christ's endeavor to give Himself away on our behalf. If we're not a missional people, a people giving ourselves away, well then how can we say we are like Christ, a holiness people? I love the church of the Nazarene for our great missional heritage and I think it's always an important question whether we are planting churches that are passionately missional and keeping with our missional Nazarene tradition. Something that I think is powerfully unique and holy about our missional identity is our belief in the importance of being obedient to the entire command of Jesus to be witnesses. In Jerusalem, which is our local mission field, that place we call home and to the ends of the earth. This emphasis on the AND of the Great Commission is so important because it means that if we want to plant faithful Nazarene churches we must make sure that we are planting locally and globally mission-minded churches and this requires that we ask some really exciting and challenging questions. How is our church and how will prospective church plants make Christ-like disciples in the nations? What is our vision and our strategy for this? I believe that we will never experience a church planting movement unless we are able to mobilize every single person in our churches to consider themselves to be missionaries who bless their local community, their friends, family and neighbors. And I believe this really is the heart of God and I also think this is where we often struggle in the church. A church will never thrive and reach the maturity level of reproduction as long as only a single pastoral figure or even an elite handful of leaders within the church are boldly sharing their faith and discipling others. We must plant churches in which we are intentional about mobilizing every member of the church to reach pre-believers. That includes you today. We have to talk about reaching the broken. We must pray every time we gather for the lost in our world and in our communities. We need to train in strategies to evangelize the lost and show the love of Christ to those around us. But it's easy to get distracted or stuck in the rut of simply ministering to the existing saints and making sure we have high quality experiences, a beautiful facility or other resources for the existing church. Now these are not bad things, they are good. But just remember that scripture tells us about the very heart of God in passages like Luke 15, where we are told the parable of the lost sheep and discover that quote, "There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one single sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who do not need to repent." The minute we cease to emphasize blessing, evangelism, witness, the sharing of our faith with others in everything we do, then the church will cease to mature toward reproduction. And more importantly, we will cease to be able to say we share the heart of God. As I spoke about in our first episode, I believe that the best way for the world to discover the love of Jesus is through the love of the body of Jesus, the church. So how are we reaching the lost? Well, there are so many strategies and plans for sharing Christ with others. There's no one right answer, but when we're passionate, we'll find a way. So what if we begin to imagine an envisioned plan and strategize about how to share Christ with the broken beloved around us? What if this was our top priority that we mobilize each and every person in our churches to take ownership of the mission of God? Are we urging all our people to accept the call on their life, whatever it is to participate in the mission of God? I believe this will never just happen organically. We need a mission of culture in our churches in which people are encouraged and even urged to accept the call to give themselves away. But we also must remember that the invitation to the mission of God is never an invitation to participate in the work of Christ only locally or only globally. We don't have to choose between those two. In fact, in my experience as a church planter, being passionate about local missions makes us more passionate about global and being more passionate about global makes us more inspired about local missions. And we're blessed with so many ways in which our church offers us opportunities to be a part of the global mission of Christ through the people of Christ in the Church of the Nazarene. And one of the most obvious ways is through the world of angelism fund giving and being educated and praying. I've heard people talk about paying the world of angelism fund as obligations or expectations. And this always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable because I've never considered Wef as an obligation. For us, it's an incredible opportunity for formation and inspiration, for a passionate and joyful response to the invitation of Christ to be a witness to the ends of the earth. We get to be a part of making a difference for Jesus in the nations. And in Sophia, in the Domachda, the Serk van den Nazarene, we have paid our Wef budget since the first offering, not to mention participating in alabaster and naturing compassionate ministries and other global mission opportunities through prayer, giving and education. Because this is a means of missional formation and inspiration for us. And so I've just got to share one quick story about this. Once a quarter in our church here in Sophia, we celebrate our missions giving in the Sunday morning service by highlighting the things that have been accomplished by the global church of which we have been a part. And we always report the amount that our local church has contributed. And I must admit that often it doesn't seem like that much. But then we multiply it by all the Nazarene churches in the world, asking what if every Nazarene church did what we can do. And we're always encouraged and inspired as we multiply our given by 30,000 churches and we see hundreds become millions. We can do so much more together. Well, earlier this year, we reported on the opening of a new district in Cuba. And this was really exciting because one of the newer families in our churches from Cuba. And after the service, the mother of that family came up to me in tears and she said, Joshua, nobody goes to these places in Cuba. I cannot believe the church of the Nazarene is there. I had no idea that we were a part of something so wonderful. And then she did something incredibly missional and holy. Her husband, you see, had just lost his job a few weeks earlier and was still searching for a new work. So you can imagine my surprise when she extended to me a 100-level bill which represented an additional 10% of their income formerly. And she said, we want this for the world evangelism fund. And when I asked if she was certain she replied, we will just trust God because what's more important than this? You see, we must birth churches that have a passion for both local and global missions as a part of our DNA from conception. When we do this, we are inspired and we are mobilized together as we participate in the mission of God. We are a Christian and holiness church when we are a missional church. When we give ourselves a way for the sake of Christ in our local community and to the ends of the earth. And it's only when we are missional in this way that we can truly say we share the heart of God. Let's pray together. Dear Lord, please be gracious to us and bless us and make your face to shine upon us. So that through us you might make your salvation known among our neighbors and to the ends of the earth. Dear Lord, may you bless us and mobilize us in order that we might be a blessing to the nations. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the Every Day Eurasia Podcast, inspiring faith for every day. For more everyday stories, subscribe on this podcast channel, follow our socials Facebook and Instagram or our newsletter snapshots. For our newsletter and further information about EurasiaVegion, visit our website EurasiaVegion.org. (C) TV GELDERLAND 2020