Two years ago pastor Luiggi and a couple of his leaders attended a Enfoque Global (Global Focus) training that I did at our home church FBCW, they caught a vision of what God could do in their own congregations. Even though they doubted some of the numbers and results that we talked about, they thought if God could do just half of that, we would be happy. Over the last year and a half I have had the opportunity to mentor their church; Primera Iglesia Bautista (the Hispanic ministry of FBC) of Woodbridge, VA. This is a congregation of about 300 Hispanics from varias parts of Latin America. Up until that point they had just a handful of leaders that were doing everything in the church. After they learned, and put into practice the Global Focus Missional Process in their church, God began to add to those that were participating. For their first every Global Celebration, literally over half of the congregation personally participated in the preparation of this huge event!.
We started the Global Celebration on Thursday pm. Almost the entire congregation was present for the opening service, they were ready, they received the missionaries with cheers, balloons, signs, and most of all with Latin American enthusiasm!
The missionaries were overwhelmed as they felt the emotion of the moment of how this church was honoring them and their calling. I was able to finish out the evening preaching on the subject of “Events and Circumstances change, but God’s Mission never changes.” On Friday evening the entire church divided up to spend time listening to each missionary in home fellowships. They were supposed to last only 2 hours, but most lasted at least 3 hours, because the people had so many questions they asked the missionaries. On Saturday we had different events where each missionary spent time with the teenagers and children of the church. Then in the evening we had they International Banquet and then the missionary forum, where each missionary was able to tell their own story of how they went from siting in the pews to serving on the field. After I spoke, we had the “Life Commitment” service where hundreds of people responded to not only pray for missions, but to personally go this next year on a their first missions trip.
On Sunday we all came together to celebrate all God had done that week, and I was able to challenge them to give sacrificially to their Faith Promise. The largest missions offering they had reviewed to that date was $15,000.00.
So the leaders had set a goal of $38,000.00, but they did not tell the congregation, they wanted to see what God had been doing in that year and a half long process of mentoring, and what God had been doing in their lives that week. We we totaled the commitment cards, the pastor and the leaders wept as they realized what God had done in the lives of their people. They had committed over $116,000.00 for their first Faith Promise Missions Offering. The majority committed to giving this offering month above and beyond their own tithe, one family even donated their car to be sold!
Results like this do not happen in a vacuum. Some might think that it is because of the very organized Missions Fair, or the promotional material or some might even think it happened because of pressure to give. But the truth is that this happened because of a missional process that engages the entire congregation and every ministry of the church to align around the overarching purpose of the church: God’s Mission. When missions is personalized, then people participate and give sacrificially.