Dr. Blue on Pioneer Church Planting

We had a FANTASTIC speaker last night at Perspectives class. What a blessing to hear him share. DR. RON BLUE is president of CENTRAL AMERICA MISSION (CAM) INTERNATIONAL. He has traveled to 50!!! different countries during his work with international missions and is a fireball of enthusiasm. His passion for evangelism and discipleship is effervescent and contagious. It flows from an obvious close relationship with His Heavenly Father.

Last night the topic was Pioneer Church Planting, but Dr. Blue added insights on many different areas of missions as well. He spoke on C1-6 strategies of evangelization among Muslims and shared a list on how to avoid syncretism. Addressing contextualization, he looked at the Apostle Paul’s effective strategies for reaching the Gentiles. We looked at obstacles to church planting, evangelism guidelines from Acts 17, and a few case studies of pioneer church planting movements.

Here are a few random notes and well-put thoughts from his lecture.

On the privilege of missions, he said-God could evangelize the world so well without us. He could send angelic messengers. Her could line up glittering stars in the heavens with a clear message, like “Jesus Saves”. He could shout it with His own trumpet voice from heaven. But he chooses to primarily use us, people made in His likeness, to bear His salvation to the ends of the earth. What a privilege!

On fear of evangelism-“There are no strangers, only friends I haven’t met yet.”

“Don’t measure evangelism by converts, but by faithfulness of proclamation.”

In intercultural communication, we can adapt how we communicate the TRUTH, to be understood in that culture, but we should never adapt THE TRUTH itself.

Christian unity must no restrict Christian liberty, Consider an orchestra, there is unity and harmony in following the same director, but there is liberty of different instruments.

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So many good thoughts. The only possible way to apply them is in the power of the Holy Spirit!