Saturday, April 14, 2007

Glocal

Church Planting globally is my burden. The term 'glocal' (global+local), describes more specifically the scope of my vision.

It often occurs that when we emphasize the global vision that people get convicted about the needs for evangelism at home, locally. This is nothing more than the Holy Spirit at work awakening us to the fact that we have been negligent of our duties at home and needful of fulfilling the Great Commission here as well. However, some will ignore the conviction they experienced regarding the call to global missions and justify themselves by arguing "Let's take care of our own 'backyard' first." Unfortunately, the work just doesn't get done in either place as it should.

So let's talk about the glocal picture. Glocal more adequately defines Acts 1:8 doesn't it? We are called to go both here at home and to the uttermost regions of the world with the Good News. Nearly everytime we take missions teams overseas God calls missionaries from those teams, or stirs fires in the hearts of those who go that they become change agents in their local churches. Because of the global missions experience of just one person the local church to which he/she belongs becomes the recipient of God's blessing. Want your church to be blessed? Go on a missions trip. What is interesting is that if only the local picture is emphasized the global vision is seldom caught. But if the global vision is promoted, the local vision is more likely to take root. Hence 'glocal'.

2 comments:

Sheff said...

Welcome to the Blogosphere! I appreciate your thoughts concerning Glocal Missions! What a great way to describe Acts 1:8!

I appreciate your ministry!

The Mr. said...

David,
A term we have been using in our SS class to get our heads around beign missionaries at home is "missional". I know its a popular idea right now, but it has helped us get a handle around living intentionally where we live with a mind toward our missional (missionary) calling to those around us.