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Revamped NAMB website points to action
Tobin Perry, Baptist Press
May 02, 2014
4 MIN READ TIME

Revamped NAMB website points to action

Revamped NAMB website points to action
Tobin Perry, Baptist Press
May 02, 2014

When it comes to evangelizing today’s global generation, stories matter. Just ask a Korean exchange student who recently committed her life to Christ in Indianapolis. Church planter Brandon Shields says when a young woman in his congregation shared Christ with her through narrative, the former atheist responded.

“[The student from my church] dug into her story and dug into the spiritual biography of Jesus in the book of John,” Shields, whose Soma Church now runs 225 in two services, said. “She accepted Christ and was baptized on Easter Sunday.”

Shields explains some of what he has learned about sharing Christ in narrative manner in an upcoming blog on North American Mission Board’s (NAMB) Send Network website.

“We’ve tried to think about recasting the story – not changing the story – but recasting the biblical story in language and forms the younger generation can understand,” Shields said. “We’ve tried to think through the hinge points of the redemption story. I wrote about those in that blog post.”

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The newly redesigned Send Network website, which officially launched April 2, helps prepare missions leaders to fulfill the Great Commission in North America. On the new site church planters, leaders of established churches and lay people committed to living on mission can find practical posts, videos and e-books written by experienced ministry leaders. The website leans heavily on tested, local church leaders with on-the-ground experience on the topics. In its first three days after the relaunch the site averaged 2,000 unique visitors per day.

Ministry leaders can find a variety of free e-books on the site, including J.D. Payne’s Leading Your Church in Church Planting, Dhati Lewis’ In Plain Sight: A Primer for Reclaiming Discipleship in the Local Church and Aaron Coe’s Church Plant Growth Projector.

“We have access to some of the best resources in the world,” Dustin Willis, NAMB’s coordinator and editor of the Send Network, said. “We have strong relationships with great church planters, incredible existing churches and passionate people within the church who are living life on mission. We have direct access to them, and they have graciously offered to help lead the way in resourcing churches and individuals.”

In an upcoming blog post, Columbus, Ohio, church planter Jeremy Westbrook shared the need for ministry leaders to develop specific habits to avoid periods of burnout. The post specifically highlights three such patterns: getting alone with God, guarding your heart and gathering a team.

“I hope pastors, planters and followers of Christ who read this will realize that, as leaders, we preach this but we don’t live it well – you’re not called to do the Christian journey alone,” Westbrook, whose Living Hope Church has grown to more than 400 people in two services since its 2009 launch, said. “You need people around you who can speak into your life. We can often preach community and accountability from the stage but then not have it for ourselves.”

The website will include training on topics like building teams, empowering teams, how to raise funds, how to be a pastor and lover of your family and how to live out the mission of God in your neighborhood. What makes the site unique among ministry-related websites is that each article will lead to a practical next step readers can engage right away, Willis said.

“We don’t just want to connect you to a blog,” Willis said. “As you read … you can connect with an expanded resource or training on the specific idea you are reading about. It is our desire that the site would not only resource someone for the moment but launch them into applying the content within their own context.”

Every post on the site will link visitors with a resource, a conference or a person that will take them deeper into the topic or help them take their first step to applying the content to their lives and ministries, Willis said.

For more information, visit www.sendnetwork.com or follow @sendnetwork on Twitter.

(EDITOR’S NOTE – Tobin Perry writes for the North American Mission Board.)