THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT: HOMEGROWN MISSIONARIES
Greg Asimakoupoulos
October 1, 1991
I was a bachelor-pastor for four years before marriage. Once my marital status changed, I knew two major shifts in my approach to ministry would also be forthcoming. The first thing to go was an eighty-hour work week I'd grown accustomed to as a single shepherd. Having an attractive reason to retreat from the study at the end of the day made that initial change fairly painless.
The second change did not come as easily. I had a blas‚ attitude toward missions. Our annual missions conference was a necessary, but flat, event on the church calendar. Missions seemed far removed from the immediacy of sermons, funerals, weddings, kids' clubs, and budgets. It was too "out there" to arrest my time or interest. That is, until I got married. You see, my wife is an MK.
My missionary-kid wife's zeal for world evangelization rubbed off on me. She helped me see that missions was much more than potluck dinners, mothball-scented displays, and boring slide shows. But the lasting change in my lackluster attitude toward missions occurred when Wendy and I moved to a small, newly established church in Northern California. As pastor I would teach them a lot about serving God. As a congregation they would teach me much about serving people around the globe.
Missions mindedness had always been the cachet of Crossroads Church. The church had been birthed by a larger Covenant congregation in the neighboring community. As a home missions baby, the infant congregation understood her dependence on volunteers, dollars, and prayer support from the mother church.
Missions for them was not spelled p-o-t-l-u-c-k or s-l-i-d-e s-h-o-w-s; it was spelled g-i-v-i-n-g. The Crossroads congregation was itself a missions project, an outpost of sacrifice and service in ...
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