I am often asked: What are the distinctives of World Team? There are two ways that I try to answer this question.
First, World Team’s distinctives flow out of our mission and vision of multiplying disciples and communities of believers.
- World Team focuses on establishing communities of believers that will reproduce themselves in creating other communities of believers. We want to bring living examples of God’s church within reach of people who do not have a personal relationship with God.
- World Team works in teams. We work in teams because we believe teams are a tangible expression of our need for all members of the body of Christ in order to carry out the mission mandate that He has given to us.
- World Team members regularly ‘speak the Gospel’ to one another. It is the ‘air we breathe’ because if the Gospel is not good news for us, how can we expect it to be good news for others.
- World Team’s size allows us to be more flexible in our approach, more innovative in our activities.
Obviously, others in the World Team community might put these distinctives differently or might add one or two others. The point is that World Team has markers as to who we are and what we do.
A second way to answer the question is by asking a question. Why are distinctives so important? By taking a ‘marketplace’ approach to missions, we try to find our market niche and offer our product to those most likely to join us. Now there is nothing wrong with trying to communicate well in this way. However, the context of missions has changed in significant ways. Many of us, as agencies, are quite similar in our distinctives. In fact, several are considering inter-agency partnerships where people are recruited to ‘multi-agency’ teams. The focus is less on the agency and its distinctives, and more on shared distinctives and a longer term objective: multiplying disciples and communities of believers.
World Team has distinctives that make us different from others. However, the World Team Global community is open to work with many other agencies and national movements because we all share similar distinctives and the same long term goal of bringing the Gospel within reach of lost people everywhere we go.
Filed under: Mission, Partnership, Vision | 1 Comment »
Today, people in one area of the world will be voting to elect the next leader of their country. For the past number of weeks, the news here where I live has focused on this upcoming election. Conversations at church, in the neighborhood, or over coffee have centred on the question: “So, who do you think is going to win the election?”
Now when I say, ‘monocultural’, I’m thinking of the idea where we look at another culture only from the perspective of our culture of origin.
However, many others will celebrate today the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, launched by Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church in Germany.
oversight and accountability for the global ministries of World Team. What that means is that they ask the hard questions about the progress of our work (to multiply disciples and communities of believers) and the outcomes of the priorities set by the International Director. This year, during our meetings in Thailand, our discussions centred around four main topics.
