North American Mission & Ministries

Race & the Church RVA: The Church’s Commission

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

The third gathering of Race and the Church in Richmond, Virginia took place on Saturday May 14.  Featured speaker Leonce Crump addressed the diverse crowd on the subject of The Church’s Commission.

Leonce Crump’s bio, from the Race and the Church RVA web page:

Originally from Louisiana and raised Catholic, Léonce began following Jesus at age 16. Always an athlete and a talker, Léonce outran his first mall security guard (and pregnant mother) at age 3, and spent most of his grade school years talking with his principals on the subject of public speaking during class. He has been in ordained ministry for 9 years, is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma; and holds Masters degrees in Criminal Justice, with a focus on Case Law, from the University of Tennessee, Missional Leadership from the now defunct Resurgence Theological Training Center, an; is currently finishing his Masters of Divinity at Reformed Theological Seminary.

At Oklahoma he was an All-American wrestler and played a short while on the Sooner football team. He experienced an extended time of rebellion and running from God during college, but after 22 months of living as though he were not a Christian he surrendered to Jesus and ultimately to God’s calling into ministry. After college Léonce competed to make the world team in wrestling, played professional football for the New Orleans Saints and coached collegiate wrestling.

Prior to planting his present church, Léonce had served in 3 churches, starting and leading 3 college and young adult ministries. In 2006 he felt called to plant a church and settled on the under-served area of downtown Atlanta; and in early 2008 he and his wife began the process of planting Renovation Church, in partnership with  Acts 29 and Perimeter Church.

A prodigious reader and engaging speaker, Léonce regularly speaks and preaches across the country at conferences and churches of all denominations. Léonce enjoys boxing and MMA, studying theology, history, leadership, church structure and poetry. He likes Soul music, jazz/standards, and Bossaniva. He also loves to lift, keep up with wrestling, football, and rugby, playing with his kids, hanging with the homeless dudes.

To view the first two gatherings of Race and the Church RVA:

Young Life 75th Anniversary Celebration

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YL Logo

Happy Birthday, Young Life! The preeminent ministry to high school students turns 75 this year.  It is worth a celebration.  Faithful to their vision, “Every Kid, Every School”,  Young Life has developed ministry to reach as many teens as possible: Wyld Life for Middle School; Young Lives for teen moms; Capernaum for students with disabilities; and of course YL Clubs at as many high schools as they are able – and still counting.

I am among the beneficiaries.  It was through Young Life in Nashville, Tennessee during the early 1980’s that Jesus ceased to be a historical yet mythical figure in my mind, and by grace that ignited faith, I understood that not only was he a real person in history, but that he is a real person in reality.  In short, through Young Life I became a Christian.  My involvement continued into college, where I participated in the preparation program to become a Young Life leader to a high school campus.  Due to other commitments I never did become a Young Life leader. But in subsequent years I have had the opportunity to on the local boards (“Committee” in Young Life lingo), even serving as chairman in Pittsburgh and for a brief time in Williamsburg, where I now live.  Perhaps, one day in the future, I will again have that opportunity.

In the mean time, I will join the celebration; excited that both of my sons are presently volunteer Young Life leaders in East Tennessee; delighted to have several of my closest friends serving as Area Directors and Regional Directors scattered around the USA.

Check out Young Life 75 celebration video: It All Started With a Prayer

 

Back On the Rez

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https://vimeo.com/24117468

For these next several days I will be on mission on the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina.  I have come to love our work in Cherokee, and I always look forward both to the opportunity to get back into the mountains, as the mountainous reservation is adjacent to the Great Smokies; and to the opportunities to renew old friendships while making new ones.

I also enjoy sharing why we do what we do.

Some have wondered: “Why Cherokee?” The answer is part of a bigger question: “Why Native American Mission?” After all, I supposed some assume, it is not like they are a pagan people, unexposed to the gospel.

While it is certainly true that Native Americans have had interaction with Christians for years, I find people are stunned when they hear how few are followers of Jesus Christ. I know I was. Overall only about 3% of Native Americans profess to believe the gospel. To be considered an Unreached People Group a People must be less than 2.5% evangelized. So it is obvious that despite having the “advantage” of regular interaction with American Christianity, Native Americans almost qualify as an Unreached People. When I think of this, and then consider that, at least by my observations among the Cherokee, the vast majority of those in church on any given week are very, very old, it will not be long until Native Americans revert back into Unreached Peoples – unless they are reached now.

Perhaps the thing that first struck me, and continues to fuel my commitment to Native American Mission, was an ad I saw a number of years ago in some Christian magazine. I do not recall either the publication or mission agency that had placed the ad, (perhaps First Tribes,) but the caption read:

“Why should America’s First People, be the last to hear?”

The unjust irony struck a nerve; and the opportunity to serve struck a chord. So now, I am laboring as part of the mission staff a few weeks each Summer, and a couple other times each year, to be part of the answer.

To give you a good introduction to the work we are doing, and why we are doing it, please watch the video above.

Cherokee People, God’s People

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

For these next few days I get to spend some time at the Cherokee Indian Reservation in North Carolina, preparing for a mission trip a team from our church will be again taking this Summer.  I have come to love our work in Cherokee and look forward both to opportunities to go over the mountain to the reservation and to opportunities to share why we do what we do.

Some have wondered: “Why Cherokee?”  Perhaps this is part of a bigger question: “Why Native American Mission?”  After all, I supposed some assume, it is not like they are a pagan people, unexposed to the gospel.

While it is certainly true that Native Americans have had interaction with Christians for years, I find people are stunned when they hear how few Indians are followers of Jesus Christ. I know I was.

Overall only about 3% of Native Americans profess to believe the gospel.   To be considered an Unreached People Group a People must be less than 2.5% evangelized. So it is obvious that despite having the “advantage” of regular interaction with American Christianity, Native Americans almost qualify as an Unreached People.  When I think of this, and then consider that, at least in Cherokee, the vast majority of those in church on any given week are very, very old, it will not be long until Native Americans revert back into Unreached Peoples – unless they are reached now.

Perhaps the thing that first struck me, and continues to fuel my commitment to Native American Mission, was an  ad I saw several years ago in a Christian magazine.  I do not recall what mission agency had placed the ad, perhaps First Tribes, but the caption read:

“Why should America’s First People, be the last to hear?”

I could not give an answer, and the unjust irony struck a chord.  So now, I am laboring to be part of the answer.

To give you a good introduction to the work we are doing, and why we are doing it, please watch the video above.

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics – An Interview

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

I am not a fan of Diane Rehm, by any measure.  Not only do I find her views unpalatable, her voice grates my ears.  But as I was driving to an appointment today I clicked the NPR preset on my JEEP radio and in the matter of seconds had my attention arrested by the discussion between Rehm and her guest, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.  Earlier this week Douthat released a book provocatively titled Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.  This book was only on my “To Read” list – or at least, it was on the list to put on my list, but now it on my “Definite Read” list.

I have no doubt that there are areas of doctrinal difference that I have with Douthat, but as I listened to him make his points and respond to Rehm and some of her regulars, I could not help but nod in agreement.   Douthat offers some astute cultural observations that, being missional, I cannot ignore.

To listen to today’s interview click: Bad Religion

5 Causes of the Decline of the American Church

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

Previewing Ross Douthat’s new book, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics,  which hit bookstore shelves yesterday, Tim Keller draws five observations about the causes of decline in the American Church.

As Keller notes:

In his second chapter, Douthat attributes the change to five major social catalysts that have gained steam since the 1960s…

Here are the five factors:

  1. First, the political polarization that has occurred between the Left and Right drew many churches into it (mainline Protestants toward the Left, evangelicals toward the Right). This has greatly weakened the church’s credibility in the broader culture, with many viewing churches as mere appendages and pawns of political parties.
  2. Second, the sexual revolution means that the Biblical sex ethic now looks unreasonable and perverse to millions of people, making Christianity appear implausible, unhealthy, and regressive.
  3. Third, the era of decolonization and Third World empowerment, together with the dawn of globalization, has given the impression that Christianity was imperialistically “western” and supportive of European civilization’s record of racism, colonialism, and anti-Semitism.
  4. The fourth factor has been the enormous growth in the kind of material prosperity and consumerism that always works against faith and undermines Christian community.
  5. The fifth factor is  that all the other four factors had their greatest initial impact on the more educated and affluent classes – the gatekeepers of the main culture-shaping institutions such as the media, the academy, the arts, the main foundations, and much of the government and business world.

I find these observations significant. As God’s missional people, it is important that Christians recognize not only the reality of the decline of our influence within our culture, but the specific contributing factors.  Simply wishing things were the way they used to be won’t accomplish anything.  It is akin to sticking our heads in the sand.  But when we discern what is going on in the world around us, a number of signs direct us toward ways we may address the causes,  both directly and indirectly.

Read Keller’s entire article: Redeemer City to City

Faith in America: Not What it Used to Be?

/ Dennis Griffith / Leave a comment

plantation-church

I appreciate the perspective of this editorial from the March 12, 2009 Kingsport Times-News. The editor integrates both history and contemporary polling data.  It eschews any alarmist inclinations and refutes any distorted notions that America was a distinctively Christian country upon it’s founding. 

I think this perspective is helpful.  I am especially hopeful that it will help in preventing Christians from mistaking either patriotism or isolationism as being synonomous with being a Christian in America. 

Whatever the current data indicates – and I suspect it changes day-to-day – our focus is not changed.  Fundamentally we are called to personally grow in grace and live out the gospel in the communities where God has placed us; to plant churches in areas underserved by faithful congregations; and to partner to see churches planted among Unreached People Groups around the world.

***

KINGSPORT – This week, the results of a new poll were eagerly distributed by national news media as evidence that faith is on the skids in America and that more and more U.S. citizens have no religion at all.

According to the latest American Religious Identification Survey, 15 percent of respondents say they have no religion, compared to 8.2 percent in 1990. The survey also recorded a decline in those identifying themselves as a member of an institutional Christian church. In 1990, 86 percent made that claim; it’s now down to 76 percent.

This isn’t necessarily evidence of anything terribly new or irreversible in the religious life of the nation. Nor do these percentages represent anything even approaching the low point in the history of American church participation. To do that, you have to go back a long, long time.

On the eve of the Revolutionary War, records show fewer than 20 percent of American adults adhered to a church in any significant way — a far cry from today when church membership stands at 146 million or roughly half of the population.

In colonial America, New England was the most churched. Between 1630 and 1660, adult church membership in most New England towns approached 70 or 80 percent. Membership was never universal, however, as these percentages demonstrate. Moreover, the cities of Boston and Salem quickly lost membership. By 1650, for example, fewer than 50 percent of Boston’s adults were church members.

By the 1680s, many New England towns reported church membership rates of no more than 10 to 25 percent. In 1690, on the eve of the Salem witch trials, that town’s churches could claim only 15 percent of its adults as members, including only half of the town’s well-to-do selectmen; yet today, Salem is a byword for religious fanaticism.

Church membership rates in the South were even worse.

In Virginia’s Charles Parish, for example, 85 percent of newborn Caucasian children went unbaptized between 1650 and 1680 — even though the parish supported a clergyman and sustained regular worship throughout the period. South Carolina had the highest church membership of any Southern state during the colonial period, at 16 percent. North Carolina had the lowest, at a mere 4 percent.

In 1780, the great church leader Samuel Mather guessed that scarcely a sixth of Boston’s adults attended church. Historians estimate that in New York City and Philadelphia, church membership probably did not approach 10 percent at that time.

Records also show that most church members during the colonial period were women. Indeed, from the 1680s — and continuing for several decades afterward, well into the 18th century — women constituted about 60 percent of church members in most congregations.

True, revivals temporarily brought more men into congregations, especially in the 1740s, but the women’s numerical majority surfaced again when the revivals faded.

Taken as a whole, at the time of the American Revolution, between 70 and 90 percent of all European colonists in America remained unattached to any church.

Such history demonstrates our ancestors were not the Christian giants they are often made out to be. On the other hand, this week’s Religious Identification Survey merely records that more Americans are opting out of organized religion, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve abandoned faith.

Servants of the Great Physician

/ Dennis Griffith / 1 Comment

davinci.jpg This morning I had the privilege to speak at the chapel service of the Christian Medical & Dental Association.  My thanks to Barbara Snapp for the invitation, and for giving Carolyn and me the guided tour.  The facility is beautiful, and your ministry operation is impressive.  

For those unfamiliar, CMDA is a multifaceted ministry and network of Christian physicans, dentists, and other medical professionals.  They offer support and encouragement to those engaged in the medical arts though discipleship, prayer, conferences and research.  They engage the culture by offering a Biblical worldview on issues related to medical ethics. And through their short-term missions arm, Global Health Outreach, CMDA provides opportunities for medical professionals (and others) to minister throughout both developing nations and countries otherwise closed to the Gospel.

Reformed University Ministries

/ Dennis Griffith / 6 Comments
 

college-campus.jpg

 

I thought I was just going to a meeting. Somehow I came away as the new chairman.   

 I was recently appointed by my presbytery to serve on the committee that oversees the work of Reformed University Ministries (RUM) at East Tennessee State University and at King College. (For those who are not Presbyterian, the presbytery is the regional network of pastors and churches.)  I’ve served on a number of committees in the two prior presbyteries of which I was a member, so it was not unfamiliar territory. I’ve even had the privilege of chairing several of them. But since I was new to this presbytery, I was a little surprised to be appointed at all.   

Then last night I went to my first committee meeting as a member of Westminster Presbytery.  The current chairman had recently announced that he will soon be moving to Morgantown, West Virginia to plant a church, and a replacement would need to be elected.  To my surprise I was nominated and, even more to my surprise, elected chairman.   

I expressed hesitancy but willingness if others would help me get acclimated to the new role.  But my hesitancies are in no way reflective of my thoughts about RUM.  In fact I think very highly of the ministry, and I am excited about working with them in this capacity.   

I have a fondness for campus ministries, both high school and college.  I have posted at other times about my affinity for and affiliation with Young Life.  And RUF (which is the designation for the individual campus “Fellowships”) is close to my heart.  Carolyn & I briefly considered working with RUF after seminary, but chose church planting, and subsequently church revitalization, instead.  But we have continued to work with, and build friendships with, those who are laboring on the campus. 

RUF’s slogan is: A Heart for God… a Love for the Campus.  As one of the fastest growing ministries in the country, they are presently on 110 campuses in the USA, and also expanding internationally. 

But RUF is distinct from most other campus ministries in several ways:  

First, and perhaps most significant, is that each campus is led by a seminary trained, ordained minister from the PCA. As the ministry grows larger – as in many cases throughout the South, RUF is the largest ministry on a number of campuses – interns who have not yet attended seminary may also be brought on board. But the leadership is well versed biblically & theologically.   

Secondly, RUF recognizes that the primary responsibility of the student is to get an education.  Therefore, unlike some other ministries – including one I was involved with in college – RUF leaders help students develop a holistic Biblical worldview with which they can interact with the intellectual challenges presented in most departments of their college. Students are not expected to “major” in RUF.  In other words RUF does not seek to dominate the time & life of the students, instead they seek to enhance it.   

Probably the most unique, at least to my knowledge, is that RUF often impacts the leaders of other campus ministries.  It is not unusual to find the leaders of Campus Crusade, or BSU, or from Young Life among other students at RUF meetings.  Often these leaders are hungry for the solid teaching.  These student leaders are shaped by RUF discipleship, and then share what they have learned with those involved in the other ministries.  That’s exciting. 

I ask you to pray for RUF, particularly at ETSU.  

And if you know any college students, even if you are not familiar with RUF, I invite you to check out  RUF on the web.  You’ll find a number of great resources, messages, and music. And don’t neglet to let the students know about it.