Could it be that we don’t send missionaries from our churches because we are not confident in our ability to replace them?

Churches that don’t have significant growth aren’t eager to see what little growth they have sent out.

In order to be fully, really confident enough to send, perhaps we need help investing in a process for replacing our best and brightest.

Perhaps the process for replacing our best and brightest ought to be the same process they will use for making disciples on the field.

If we use CPM and obedience-based discipleship principles at home, we will be little “missionary factories”–rapidly growing men and women who will follow after God with all their heart, wherever he leads, and making disciples wherever they are.

Naturally, some of those would be sent abroad–but perhaps many more would do the same thing here.

Noah spent a century as the joke of the town. (Not a few days, a week or a month–but a hundred years!)

He was the conspiracy theorist of his day: believing in something bad for which there was no evidence.

He was the crazy prophet whose prophecy didn’t come true–at least, not for a massively long time.

He didn’t have a single convert in the whole of his ministry.

None of that invalidated the vision God gave him, nor prevent his obedience.

Believing in the existence of God (or even Jesus) and having knowledge of their nature and character only qualifies you to be a demon.

The only thing that qualifies us to be children of God is a relationship based on grace, love and obedience.

Jesus made an interesting statement in Matthew 25:

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

³⁷ “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

⁴⁰ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

Therefore, it is possible to “find Jesus” in a Muslim, Hindu or Buddhist—that when a Muslim moves in next door, it is similar (in a way) to when Christ “took on flesh and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message)

The development of ministry partners seems to be the bane of every missionary. Well, maybe just the introverts, like me.

I’ve tried a subscription mode for the website in the past, but as I discovered, it just didn’t work. So we stopped it. Because in the end, developing partners is probably a better approach for missions than developing subscribers.

Financially, our family is more stable than we have been in the past. This is partially, it is to be admitted, because we are presently in Texas in a fully-funded missionary house that has been graciously provided for us by a wonderful church—and our house in Virginia, which is still for sale, is presently rented out. Once the house sells and we buy something here, then we will back in the wonderful world of mortgage payments and utilities and the like. But for right now, we’ve been given a very gracious “wood between the worlds.”

Still, there are things that need to be funded—primarily operational expenses, but also mundane stuff like groceries and what have you. We have steadfast ministry partners who have been with us through thick and thin over the past several years. Now, we need to develop more of them.

Our mission agency is developing a fantastic resource network in the area of ministry partner development—well, what I’ve learned so far in this arena is fantastic—and I look forward to more help in the future. In the meantime, I am once again doing my best here.

Here’s what we do (well, God does through us). These are the main bits:

• Write and post analysis pieces and journal entries at justinlong.org, highlighting current trends and how they impact Christianity, missions, and church planting.
• Consistently, tirelessly, continuously advocate for mission to the least-evangelized.
• Provide research, analysis and strategy development to our mission agency (Mission to Unreached Peoples) as well as to other agencies, particularly in the area of the use of information and the development of recruiting & mobilization efforts.
• Develop the online missionary training course, MissionManual.org. This has been stagnant over the past several months while we got down here to Texas, but I’m starting to record more pieces for this.

Here’s what our ministry partners do:

• Retweet, repost, and reshare our information with others so that the whole body of Christ (and especially missionaries) benefit.
• Provide story suggestions and links to reports and information that will be of interest, which feeds our analysis
• Comment on information to provide additional insight, context, etc.
• And, of course, provide funds to help us keep this going, pay for software, services, transportation, etc.

Right now, the ministry work we do requires about $100/day in funding. More than just our personal support (which many steadfast donors help with), this also provides for things like travel to conferences where we work with people in the area of research, information development, etc.; purchase of software and data (mostly the latter—new databases of country-by-country statistics, etc); purchase of space and bandwidth for the missionmanual and other resources, and on and on.

Right now, my goal is once again to find 300 donors at $100/year ($10/month). Will you pray with me that we will find these supporters? Will you consider being one of them? Will you recommend someone to us?

These kinds of blog posts are, of course, pretty bland. I want to get personally in touch with people and share the vision of this ministry. So pray for me as I do that. At the same time, if our work has touched you, and you haven’t yet partnered with us, would you consider in this Thanksgiving to Christmas season giving a one-time gift toward this work?

You can use this link. Thank you.

Once you have a vision, the second step in building a swarm is to begin gathering a community of people who share the same vision.

If you can’t convince others, it could be that you just aren’t that skilled at persuasion yet.

Or it could be that you aren’t convinced yourself.

If the vision isn’t clear enough to win you–if the vision is still too easily disposed of–no one else will be willing to live and die for it along with you.

The Latin words victus and vincere have to do with conquering. It was something the Romans were very interested in, and very good at.

From those words we get the root word “vict” and “vinc”. You can see these roots in a large number of our words.

There’s “victim”–one who is conquered (and perhaps sacrificed).

There’s “victimize”–one who is made a victim of.

There’s “victor”–the one who wins.

There’s “convict”–one who has been proved guilty of a crime (or “to convict”, which means to prove guilty). We don’t want to be convicts.

There’s also “convicted”–which is the past tense of “convict,” and means one who was convicted of a crime in the past. But we also use this in a positive sense, in the church: “we are convicted that…” It means that we are convinced of something.

“Convince,” of course, comes from this same root. It’s a bit more positive. It means “completely certain about something.”

This leads to “conviction”–which can mean a formal, public declaration or a firmly held belief.

All of these words have to do with being conquered by something. Someone has victory, and someone has been defeated. Someone has been captured and put into prison.

If you have become convicted about something or convinced of something–it has conquered you.

What is holding you prisoner?

If it’s Christ, well and good: we can be a prisoner of Christ with Paul.

If it’s not Christ, perhaps a little rebellion and Christ-given freedom is in order.

“Little foxes spoil the vine.”

If you want to grow grapes to make wine: you have to get rid of the foxes.

You might fence off the vine. Or you might kill the foxes.

What you can’t do: argue with the foxes.

It doesn’t matter how cute they are. It doesn’t matter how red their fur, how sad their eyes, how clever they are with their paws and their teeth. It doesn’t matter that they find your grapes so delicious, or that foxes will be foxes.

If you want to grow grapes–if you want to raise your vision to maturity–you have to get rid of the foxes.

As we’re driving down the road, we some times pass a big cargo truck. On the back is plastered a sign that says, “Lights on for safety.”

Get up in the middle of the night and head to the bathroom, and what might happen–you might bash your knee against the bed, or stub your toe on the door. Sometimes we switch on the light–for safety.

But the light can be uncomfortable. When my wife is the one rustling about, switching on lights, I can roll over, grumbling. Why are you up? What’s with all the lights? Why are you disturbing my sleep?

Light is uncomfortable. It can be uncomfortable for disturbance–because it can reveal a mess. I walk into a room, switch on a light and we could see an unclean room. Switch on a spiritual light and we can see an unclean light.

In many places in Africa, for a woman to go use an outhouse or latrine at night is to risk the very real possibility of rape.

Light is about accountability, transparency, and openness.  What is hidden in darkness?

Jesus is the light of the world: you can’t have revelation with out light. How much light do you and I have in our lives right now?

Seen on a billboard: “Don’t fix it. Sell it.”

This is the disposable life.

Spouses that are disposable: exchanged when (possibly) “better” ones come along.
Children that are disposable: abandoned when they do not live up to our ideals.
Friendships that are disposable: swapped out for newer, “cooler” ones.
Dreams that are disposable: when they cost us security.
Visions that are disposable: when they seem unachievable.

Sometimes, we do have to sacrifice.

But sacrifices required rituals. They were done in the right way. They were placed on an altar and burnt up as a sweet-smelling offering before the Lord. I imagine there might even have been some tears from children, perhaps, when animals they had grown close to were sacrificed. Sacrifice is solemn.

More often, we throw away.