Church Planting Seminar (Nov. 3rd & 4th)
Our sending church and the training center where I received my training are hosting a church planting seminar in November. It should be a great opportunity for those interested in church-planting. Here are the details:
Pastor Gardner and the staff of the Our Generation Training Center is very excited to host the Church Planting Conference for Our Generation. Dr. Earl Jessup will be our keynote speaker for this practical, motivating conference. The modules are designed to help instruct the students in the Our Generation Training Center and over thirty missionaries on the field that work alongside out training ministry.
We are opening this this Seminar up to the public free of charge. You will be able to join us at Vision Baptist Church from November 3rd & 4th. We will start at 10 am on Thursday and Friday. We will conclude at 1 pm on Friday. There will be a service on Thursday night. At the conference you will be able to spend time with church planters, fellowship, and be benefit from “Questions and Answer Sessions”. We will also be making the workshop available online.
Many subjects will be covered during our seminar. The following list is not exhaustive but will give you an idea of some the topics that will be covered:
- The responsibilities of a Church Planter
- What jobs to delegate and how
- What to do before and after the service
- How to organize your launch
- How to make noise for the 1st service
- How to motivate your church to plant more churches
- How and when to start another work
If you plan to join us we would like to know. We are able to provide a list of local hotels and restaurants. Also, there are a very limited amount of lodging options provided by people in the church.
07.13.11
An Open Letter to the F.B.C. VisionTour Goers
Dear F.B.C. VisionTour Goers,
Your trip is approaching quickly and we are excited about you coming and visiting this great land that we have the opportunity to live and work in. Thank you for your partnership and support of our family. I wanted to write this letter hopefully to share some insight and encouragement as your prepare for this missions trip.
First, this trip will be one of the hardest trips you have ever taken. I don’t say that to scare you but to prepare you. For a week and a half you will be telling your body that day is night and night is day. There is a 12 hour time change that is hard to conquer and master in the short amount of time you will be here. You will be tired and worn out. The first few days you might be carried through by adrenaline, but eventually it wears off, you will be tired. Rest when you need rest, but keep pushing forward.
You will be living and traveling in a major city. Transportation will be different and uncomfortable. You will be surround by a cement jungle and people are everywhere.
The food will be different and even the common food doesn’t exactly have the same taste as back home. There are many good foods and things to eat, but I have been in China for awhile now.
You will be surrounded by hundreds of dead people walking. They are no longer on the other side of the world, it is not a story, it will be reality staring you in the face.
Second, this trip will be one of the most rewarding trips you have ever taken. You will get to meet some of the greatest people in the world. You will get an opportunity to fellowship with people from the church. The church is young and the people aren’t perfect but they love Jesus. Your time here is short but we hope you will take the time to get to know some of these dear people.
As you are involve in ministry through sharing your testimony, distributing literature, or participating in an activity, we hope there will be those that hear and receive the Gospel because of your involvement
You will get to experience China and see many great sites!
Third, I can’t guarantee you that the trip will go as planned. I can’t tell you that everything is going to be comfortable. Actually, I can almost guarantee you that something is going to go wrong. But that is life. Out of the many trips that I took with my youth pastor he taught me three words “adjust, adjust, adjust” and that is exactly what we will do when a curve ball is thrown our way.
When things aren’t as you imagined a bad attitude can arise. We might not get to eat when it’s time, situations might not be as comfortable, you get sick, or something else happens, make an effort to keep the same self-less, humble, willing attitude that you had when you signed up for the trip.
Fourthly, prepare spiritually because after all this is a spiritual trip. We want God to work in your lives. We hope that He already is! Continue that as you take this trip. Read the Word and pray. As your eye affects your heart let what is seen be directed through the lens of the Word of God. We want real impact not emotional.
When you return to America we want the impact to be more than “I am thankful for America and all the things that I have.” You will see poverty that is hard to swallow. You will see conditions that make you thankful that you have a nice house, car, clothes, church building, etc. We should be thankful for these things, but we want a greater impact. We want the kind of impact that a lost man can’t comprehend. We want you not to just be burdened about their poverty and thankful for your prosperity, we want you to become burdened about their spiritual poverty and realize you were given spiritual prosperity to do something about it. We want you to surrender your lives or mobilize others to go in your place.
In closing, your are a great church and God is already using you in many great ways. Continue that legacy and let your life make an impact of this trip and let this trip impact your life.
In Christ,
Mark
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VisionTour: China
We have several opportunities for you to be involved with Project China. One of those opportunities is taking a VisionTour.
VisionTours are short-term mission trips. We want to invite you to consider taking a short-term mission trip to China. There are two ways we organize VisionTours:
- Your church family can organize a trip.
- You can join a trip that is planned by the missionary.
The short-term trips are usually ten days long. The purpose for these trips are three-fold:
Vision - We want you to get a vision first hand. We try to communicate the need through our blog and prayer letters but some things are hard to communicate. We want you to feel, smell, taste, and see China. We know that your eye will affect your heart and we want you to be affected. We want to open your eyes to the true need of China and implant a vision for the work of God here.
Ministry – We want to open the door for you to be involved in ministry. Even though you don’t speak Chinese there is a small door of opportunity for you to use your English and help us reach out to College students and students of English. Not only that but you can help through flyer/tract distribution and conducting Children outreach activities.
Encouragement – We want to be an encouragement to the church and families who partner with our ministry and give them a chance to be an encouragement to the missionary families. It is like a reverse furlough and allows us to have fellowship and be encouraged by those from our home country.
If you are interested in taking a VisionTour to China, contact us through our website!
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The Missions Conference Series (1 of 5) Perspective
Awhile ago I was asked to write down some ideas concerning missions conferences to help give a missionary’s perspective. (I have been around when missions conference were being planned at our church and helped plan them. Then on deputation we participated in several different missions conference. Each one of them were very unique.)
When I was asked to write some ideas, I realized that if I just gave what were the pros and cons in my opinion it wouldn’t be very helpful (as I wasn’t going to be in the conference since I was already on the field). I could give a perspective on what we personally liked but that could be the opposite of other missionaries. You can’t fit all missionaries into the same mold.
Also, I realized that a missionaries perspective and a church’s persecutive are totally different. The church does a conference once a year whereas the missionary participates in a conference every week or month. What the church gets excited about once a year the missionary has to weekly be excited about. This is just something that the missionary has to learn to deal with.
Therefore, when I was thinking through our experience, I tried not to just give what our favorite things were, but to give advice and list questions for churches to ask themselves and the missionaries coming to the conference.
As I put these thoughts together for this series I wanted it to be more useful than an average list of generic things you can do at a missions conference. I didn’t want to give outdated ideas and tacky themes. Nor did I want to complain about bad past experiences. There are plenty of others who write about that. I wanted to arrange these thoughts into something useful.
I would say that it would be better to customize the missions conference every year based on your church family and the missionaries that are going to be involved, rather than have the same plans year-after-year and just changing who the missionaries are that attend. Otherwise you will find that missionaries that come to the conference aren’t always going to fit the mold of what you have done. What was a blessing in times past is not always a blessing to the missionary who is coming to your next conference.
Next Post: The Missions Conference Series – (2 of 5) – First Things First
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Kid’s Festival
We had another awesome weekend. With the help of a short term missions group that is here the church put on a Kid’s Festival. It was very similar to a “Fall Festival” in the states. I had little involvement, due to language studies, but I was able to help pass out flyers the night before and help the day of the festival. Here is what took place:
- Games & Activities: The group came up with several different games and activities that were inexpensive yet fun! This included face painting, a fishing game, nock-down-the-bottles game, jewelry making, and many more. They we super creative with the games and the children enjoyed all of them.
- Prizes: All of the kids were given a bag which included a flyer and business card with information about the church. They used this bag to collected the candy they received from each station for participating. They could even win a gold fish!
- Location: The festival was held in the middle of the plaza of the housing estate where the church is located. So when we told people about the church or they asked, we could simply point to our location.
- Invitations: They did a great job getting the flyers out before the event. The flyers included the information on one side and a paper-cut-out-craft-thingy on the other side. They passed them out in public, in front of the school as the kids were being released and in the housing estates. The night before we took the rest of the flyers and put them on the front of the main-entrance-doors of the apartment buildings.
- Play: In the middle of the event the group put on a play as it was narrated in Chinese. Everyone crowded around and seemed to enjoy it.
We had no idea what was going to happen. Would anyone come? Would we get in trouble? As we had these thoughts in the back of our mind we moved forward and the Lord gave us a beautiful day on Saturday. The sun was shining bright the weather though chilly was starting to warm. The team met early at the church to start preparations and setting everything up. The people started coming, and more came, and before we knew it, we had a huge crowd being involved and interacting with the group and church members. Over 150 came out that day! Wow! Many asked about the church and all the children received invitations in their bag.
At the end of the event, everyone had a great spirit and started to clean up. But it wasn’t over. We moved the games inside the daycare where we have the church. After lunch, we put on a smaller version of the festival for the children who attend there. Many of them have some sort of disability.
This was a great day and outreach for the church, it seemed, but would anyone come to church the next day because of it? The neighborhood definitely knows we are here!
Find out what happened in the Next Post: Sunday’s Report.
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Our Generation Camps in 2011
If you have been following my updates over the years, then you know that every year I say something about a camp. This camp has had different names throughout the years but has had the same focus “to see young people turn their hearts and minds to bringing God to glory through global missions.” Our desire is to see our generation surrender their lives and take the Gospel message to the world.
This year we have two camps taking place. The new Our Generation Camp is for middle school and high school students (7th – 12th grade) and another one is the 8th Annual Our Generation Student Leadership Camp for collage age students.
You can find all the details about the camps by CLICKING HERE (GIVE ME MORE INFO!)
It you are looking for a youth camp for your church or something for your college and career class, these are great opportunities for them to be impacted for world missions. I hope you will look over the information and give it some consideration (then GO!).
Here is a testimony from a young man who attended the camp and is now preparing for the mission field.
“In the summer of 2009, I took a trip from Jefferson, Maryland to Alpharetta, Georgia, for 10 days. What I did not know is how much this trip would change my life, and how God would use it to work in my life.
A few years before that, in 2005, and in 2006, I had taken trips to BCWE camps, and through them, felt that the Lord was leading me to give my life to full time missions.
However, after 2006, I went back to Maryland, and quickly burnt out. I had a desire to serve God, but I did not have the know how, or the instructors to guide me. Rather than seeking God with my life, I went to college to run track, and during that year God would radically shake my life. I was miserable. I got back in contact with David Gardner, missionary from Vision Baptist church, and he invited me to the 2009 BCWE Summer Camp.
At that camp, God worked in my life, through the preaching, time spent with the missionaries and staff of Vision Baptist, and the mini-missions trips to different temples in the area. I can look back, and say, with full assuredly, that during that week, God changed my life not just for a week, but the rest of my life.
Before the camp, I had a desire to serve God, by was torn between serving Him, and serving myself with my life. After the camp, there was no doubt as to what I needed to do. Instead of enrolling in another semester of college, I moved from MD to GA, to enroll in the OGTC.
This camp was, without doubt, greatly used of God in directing me in the path of His will. I would definitely say, with full confidence, that this camp can be greatly used in your life to help you find out what it is that God wants you to do with your life.
If you are interested in serving God with your life, if you know that God wants to use your life, and if you want to see your life have an eternal purpose, the 2011 BCWE camp would be an extremely great place to start seeking.”
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A Global Day of Prayer for the Chinese 2/3/2011
“A Global Day of Prayer for the Chinese” is a day in which we are reminded and encouraged to pray for the largest nation and largest people group in the world today! We need to pray for the over 1.3 billion in China and the millions of Chinese that live outside of its borders. It is a day for you and your local church to say a special word of prayer for the souls of China and the Chinese community all around the world. Pray that the Lord will send forth laboueres, that the gospel will be boldly proclaimed, and that God will be glorified among the Chinese people!
This year Chinese New Year is on Thursday, February 3, 2011.
What can you do? Here are a few ideas:
- Have special prayer for China on Thursday.
- Organize a special time of prayer in your Church the service previous to Thursday.
- Click Here to visit a website where you can click on a map of China and prayer for different regions and prayer request associated with it.
- Find a Chinese restaurant near you and make it appoint to tell a Chinese person Happy New Year and give them the Gospel!
- Order Chinese tracts from here, and give them out all that week, to the Chinese people in your area.
- Contact a missionary working with the Chinese and ask for specific prayer request that you can pray for.
What to pray for?
- Pray for the country of China and the Chinese community all around the world.
- Pray for souls to be saved, laborers to be sent, missionaries to boldly proclaim the gospel and God to be glorified!
Check out bcwe.org
12.31.10
Heading into the New Year!
The New Year arrives about 13 hours earlier for us this year. For the past several years at this time of year we have been at the Our Generation summit in Gatlinburg, TN (which you can watch this year’s event live at www.bcwe.org) being motivated and trying to motived others for missions. This year we are on the mission field.
And come to think of it, we have the summit for this reason. To move people from excited to action. Move them from off the field to on the field. This is the purpose of the conference to see more surrender their lives and take up residents in a foreign land for the evangelization of that people.
As we are entering our first “New Year” here on the mission field, we are not surrounded by a group of individuals who have the same passion and desire the we do to see the world reached with the gospel. There is no rallying together. We are on the other end of the missions call. The pep rally is over and we are in the game.
Three months of language school have been completed and the more I learn the more I realize I don’t know. Culture shock comes in many different forms and disguises itself so well. Stress on our marriage is different than what it use to be as simple things seem to be magnified. Sickness seems to come much easier. I have been out of commission for almost a week do to the flu or something of the like and though that doesn’t seem to be very different, my wife has been sick with something just about every other week at the least. Every time she gets on her feet is seems like she is nocked down again.
So is it worth it? Is it worth all the hype the we make about it? You better believe it. As we are heading into 2011 we are with the rest of our fellow laborers shouting to the theme of “for the sake of His name.”
11.29.10
3 Great Upcoming Events!
The first two events are close to my heart as I have been involved in them from the beginnings. I have been to all of the camps and summits that have been held by BCWE and this is the first year I won’t be able to attend (for obvious reasons). These two events have impacted and helped shape my life to the point where I am today. I first started attending as a student simply with a heart that wanted to do something for God. I knew I wasn’t anything special but I wanted to be used. When I attended these events and saw a passion for the Glory of God, I knew I wanted to be apart of it. I was hooked. And over the next several years I was able to be apart of the team to the point I was helping organize and even speaking at the events.
It has been awesome to see how the Lord has used theses two World Evangelism events to recruit more laborers, motive more Christians, and lift His name high! Let me challenge you to go. Let me challenge you to do more than just “consider” about this amazing opportunity, but take the next step and actually register and attend one of these events. You truly will be challenged and need to evaluated what you are doing for the cause of Christ. Maybe you are thinking about missions and how you can be more involved. Maybe you were like me and just kinda out there in limbo but wanted to do great things for your Great God! Whatever it may be, go! You can take my seat!
Here is some information about each event with links to each of them:
#1 – Our Generation Summit
Description: The Our Generation Summit is an annual gathering in Pigeon Forge, TN, of Christians with a heart for world missions. Pastors and missionaries, teachers and students, businessmen and families join for three days to address the needs of a world waiting for the Gospel.
Located once again at the beautiful Music Road Hotel in the center of action-packed Pigeon Forge, the OG Summit provides a fantastic venue for any church or youth group seeking an easy-to-organize winter retreat filled with excitement and passion for Christ.
Dates: December 30, 2010 – January 1st, 2011
Location: Music Road Hotel in Pigeon Forge, TN.
For Who: Anyone!
More Info: www.ogsummit.info – Go here and watch the video!
#2 Our Generation Camp and the 8th Annual Our Generation Student Leadership Camp
Description: This a summer youth camp unlike anything you have ever been to before! We have missionaries from around the world coming in to spend time with teenagers and spread a passion for world evangelism.
We will also have the 8th Annual Our Generation Student Leadership Camp going on at the same time and on the same campus. This is an unique opportunity for college age students to meet with others with a like faith and passion for missions while being instructed by veteran missionaries. The college ages students will be involved in a separate track then the teenagers. We will combine for the evening service and meals.
Dates: May 30 – June 3, 2011
Location: Fort Bluff Camp in Dayton, TN.
For Who: High-school and College Students!
More Info: http://bcwe.org/events/our-generation-student-leadership-camp/ – Download the information packet, it is filled with tons of great stuff that you need to know!
The last event is a expository preaching conference at our home church, that I wanted to make you aware of in case you would be interested in going.
#3 Bible Expo 2011
Description: Hosted by Vision Baptist Church and the Our Generation Training Center the Bible Expo 2011 will be a Conference on Expository Preaching. Preaching the Bible verse by verse and chapter by chapter. Being a voice for the text and not getting a good thought and finding a verse to match! Pastor Scott Tewell will be the main speaker.
Dates: April 5-8, 2011
Location: Vision Baptist Church in Alpharetta, GA
For Who: Pastors, Preachers, Missionaries, and Students.
More Info: http://austingardner.net/2010/11/11/bible-expo-2011/
If you have any specific questions, you can ask in the comments below, and I will try to answer them for you or direct you to the right place.
06.26.10
Our Generation Student Leadership Camp
We had a great time at the Our Generation Student Leadership Camp June 14-18. We were able to see somewhere around 50 students come out and participate for the week. I believe many decision were made to give Christ all and to be “”willing and desirous to go to the mission field.”
The Lord moved throughout the week in the hearts of His people. Our prayer is that we can know Him and that the world might know Him.
It was another great year of camp and the team is already planning for next year, so pray about getting your student ministries involved in this intense week of getting a vision for world evangelism.
Here are some of the pictures from different “missions trips” throughout the week:
| Posted in Church Planting, Events, Project China | 2 Comments »