What happens when.......

--What happens when a small, local church is primarily serving a segment of its community that has a 70 percent unemployment rate and those that do work are making minimum wage?

--And what happens when your average American Christian visits a church like the one I just mentioned and the majority of the congregation comes from countries that most Americans have never heard of?

--And what happens when that visiting American Christian is greeted by people from the congregation, the majority of whom speak English with a heavy accent, if they can speak English at all?

--And what happens when that visiting American Christian hears the bible-based message from the American pastor of that multi-ethnic congregation intentionally speaking slowly and as articulately as possible?

--What happens when all of these things are happening, and more?

Most of those visitors encourage the pastor after the service that it's a great work that God is obviously doing here.

And then they are never seen or heard from again.

Because of these things and a few others, the Lord has shown myself and the leaders of our church that we need to begin viewing what we're doing as a "mission" church, station or outpost rather than a stand alone, completely independent local church.

What does that mean? What would that look like?

I'll try to explain next time.