Searching
By Gailyn & Becky Van Rheenen
We praise God for his blessings in our lives during the past month. We see him working daily as Mission Alive continues to develop. We ask you to participate with us on our feeble journey to participate in God’s mission. This month has been defined by the word “searching.”
Searching for a New Home
We have lived in our house in Abilene for over 17 years. It has become a place of memories to us, for our four children, and for students who have used our home as a place of learning and reflection over the years. Despite fond memories, we are thankful to have sold our house and purchased another in the north-central area of the Metroplex (Dallas-Ft. Worth). We also pray that it will be a place of memories, a meeting place of missionaries, a launching pad for domestic church planting. It is located in Carrollton, where roads converge to provide access to future church plantings in the northern corridor, where hundreds of new houses are being built; in the central corridor of Dallas-Ft. Worth, where the poor live; and in downtown Dallas. The address of our new home and also our new mailing address is:
4207 Meadow Ridge Drive
Carrollton, TX 75010
We anticipate times of fellowship with many of you in our new home! We will be moving next week, March 19-20.
Searching for Interns, Apprentices, and Missions Associates
God graciously blessed us in discovering future interns (short-term workers learning basic skills in evangelism), apprentices (vocational participants in church planting for a period of 15 months), and missions associates (long-term church planters) during this month, almost always in unusual and surprising ways.
Time and time again at the ACU lectureship we met with past and current students, elders and preachers, about the need for church planting. In one, powerful three-hour period God led us to a future apprentice and a future mission associate. We have found that long-term relationships in the service of the Lord have simple beginnings. This summer we anticipate a retreat with about twelve families and individuals who would like to work with us as apprentices or mission associates.
This month we began our journeys to different Christian schools to recruit interns, apprentices, and missions associates. We were at Harding University for three days. We were pleased with our reception at Harding and by the missions focus of the campus. We continuously met with students before and after class presentations and met with others who traveled to meet us from Harding Graduate School in Memphis. We appreciate Marvin and Judith Crowson who hosted us and Monte Cox and others who arranged for our visit. Robbie James, campus minister at Boles Home and a future missions associate, traveled to Harding to help us with this ministry.
Searching for Finances
As in most new ministries, we live by faith that God will provide. Currently we have raised $38,000 of the $135,000 needed to launch Mission Alive. This includes small salaries for Becky and me, office supplies, printing of brochures, development of a web site, expenses for the Mission Alive Church Planting Conference, travel, and other such expenses.
We know that evangelism and church planting are also upon the hearts of many individuals. We pray that God will raise up many participating individuals, who will contribute to Mission Alive. An African proverb says, “Haba na haba, hujaza kibaba” (“A little here and a little there fills up the measure.”) Please send your contributions to:
Mission Alive
c/o South 11th and Willis Church of Christ
3309 S. 11th Street
Abilene, TX 79605
We are also searching for participating churches, who will join with Mission Alive to
plant “reproducing missional[1] churches in suburbs, city centers, and poverty areas with unbelievers as the primary target.” We believe that churches in North America must begin to think of themselves as God’s missionary people. This is particularly true in growing urban contexts like Dallas-Ft. Worth. Our churches have moved from the cities to older suburbs and solidified there. It is time for us to begin to plant churches in newer suburbs, rejuvenating urban contexts downtown, and among the poor.
God is calling us to become missionaries in our own culture. We should no longer swim in our aquariums without perceiving the oceans of God work.
The goal of Mission Alive is to train talented, motivated Christian leaders as evangelists and church planters in urban contexts. Because of our long experience as church planters and mentors of missionaries at ACU, we believe that God has raised us up in this season of life to mobilize a new generation of Church planters. Our goal is to mentor evangelists to plant 25 suburban churches, 150 house and apartment churches, and two urban (downtown) churches by 2015. We believe that the greatest growth in Churches of Christ in this generation will take place through the intentional planting of new churches.
Searching for God
We have found that this period of life has been a time of both desperate struggle and spiritual revival.
We have struggled with the thought of leaving our friends (especially those of the Willis family and in the Institute for Missions and Evangelism at ACU) and family in Abilene. We have struggled with the stamina and finances to develop a “pathway to church planting” for Churches of Christ. We struggle with the business of moving from a home and place we love. Can we, like Abraham, overcome our doubting in order to be faithful to God?
In our struggles, we have found a closer relationship with God. We more fully feel God’s presence, acknowledge the Spirit’s leading in the opening and closing of doors (Acts 16:6-10), and feel the overwhelming joy of returning to the mission field. We are finding God in the eyes of the searching people that we meet as we survey Dallas-Ft. Worth. The eyes of the poor are evasive, unsure of life, frightened. The eyes of the suburbanite are “darting,” anticipating the next thing that they need to do. The eyes of the urbanite are self-assured, believing that they have the problems of the world solved (until they fail). Our task is to see all of them with God’s eyes, despite our frailty and doubts, and share with them eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart, soul-to-soul. Such is the nature of identificational ministry.
Gailyn & Becky Van Rheenen
[1] Missional Churches are biblically-focused, Christ-formed, Spirit-led fellowships representing the purpose and reign of God on earth