Mission Week is Almost Here!

Mission Week is Almost Here!

This week, Pastor John hands over the TAGD keyboard to Pastor Brent Whitefield, Noerthpoint’s Pastor of Missions and Outreach.

Mission Week is almost here and this year there will be something for everyone.  It will be an opportunity for us to hear from old friends and make some new ones. Next Sunday, October 19, we will welcome Peter Morris to the pulpit. Peter will be leaving shortly to serve as team director for the EFCA’s ReachGlobal in San Jose, Costa Rica. At our Sunday night potluck dinner, we will hear from our Tuba City team about our work among the Navajo and Hopi of Arizona. Peter Morris, who also has extensive experience working with Native Americans, will share his ministry heart and plans, including the strategic importance of ReachGlobal’s urban team-building approach.

On Monday evening, October 20, we confront directly the theme of the week: “Doing Business with God.” Prof. Neal Johnson will share his groundbreaking work on the concept of business as mission (BAM). Whether or not you are a businessperson, this session will open your eyes to the creative ways in which mission is being carried out around the world. Perhaps you have always thought of business as, at best, a cover for mission or a source of financial support. But have you ever thought of business as mission itself? You may discover that you have skills, talents, and opportunities that can be used to advance the cause of the kingdom that you had never considered before. This would be a great session to which to invite a Christian business colleague or friend.

Tuesday night, October 21, will offer some radical new ways of doing mission in the twenty-first century. We are privileged to have Oscar Muriu, the senior pastor of Nairobi Chapel in Kenya, who will challenge us with his program for planting churches throughout urban Africa and beyond. Joining him will be Lionel Young, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Valparaiso, Indiana and author of A New Kind of Missionary, to share the role his church is playing in these indigenous African church plants. Together, they will show us how the role of the Western church must change in places like Africa, from a model of colonialism and dependency, to something more faithful and successful. They will offer us some exciting food for thought about what our new role should be.

Thursday evening, October 23, we will hear our Alaska and Spain teams share about their summer missions and our missionary in Barcelona, Stephen Philips, will speak about his plans for planting churches in the Catalan region of Spain, some of the hardest ground in the world for gospel seed.

There will be opportunities to give to as well: Saturday, October 25, we will pack meals (our goal is 15,000 meals) to send to the hungry overseas, we will collect supplies for persecuted Christians in the Middle East, and raise money for our team going to Ethiopia in November. There will be food, games, and prizes all week.

Please pray. Pray for the week, pray for those who we support, pray for wisdom in determining where best to direct our resources, pray for persecuted believers around the world. And pray for those who we will be sending over the next two weeks to Carranza, Tuba City, India, South Africa, and Ethiopia.

Mark your calendar for October 19-26, take the schedule insert from the resource folder this Sunday, affix it to your refrigerator, and plan to join us as often as you can. You will be informed, challenged, inspired, and blessed. If you have never thought about the role that the Lord would have you play in fulfilling the Great Commission, may this be a week where you take time to “do business with God.”

Pastor Brent