Last week Xochitl and I were able to participate in the Global Impact Celebration for Shades Mountain Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL. Global Focus mentored this wonderful church along with pastor Dr. Danny Woods 20 years ago. For the last 19 years they have had one of the premier Global Impact Celebrations in the United States. Their church has not only raised phenomenal amounts of funding for missions, but their people have personally engaged in missions locally and globally. (Take a look at this wonderful video of what it means to Live Sent https://vimeo.com/shadesmtn)
As Pastor Danny read an email from a college age young person and his perspective of having grown up in a church that is so focused on missions, and has a yearly Global Impact Celebration. The email expressed the impact that missions has had in his own life; how he viewed missionaries as normal people, that taking missions trips was a normal part of his church experience and that even now as he personally considered a career in mission, he did not view it as something extra spiritual or abnormal, but a normal pathway for his own Christian experience.
If there is a theme that encompasses what Global Focus teaches, it was the theme of the Global Impact Celebration at last week, “Live Sent”. What this theme teaches is that every single one of us, at every moment in our lives, and in every place, are sent by Jesus Christ to fulfill His Mission and not necessarily our own. That is exactly what God is doing in churches all over Latin America!
