The Goal of This New Ministry

     Mark Deymaz of Mosaic Ministries was a speaker at Exponential, a national church planting conference that I attended in Orlando in 2013. I sat in on his special track of workshops and was greatly blessed as well as challenged. Two statistics he shared stood out to me above all the others. Churches as a whole in the United States are 10 times more segregated than their neighborhoods and 20 times more segregated than their nearby public schools. Mark then asked, "If the Kingdom of Heaven is not segregated, how can the churches be?"
     That is why I am starting this new ministry. I am "semi-retired" at this point. I have retired from full-time pastoring, but I have no intention of retiring from ministry. I am excited about what God may yet use me to do.
     Since moving to Miami, Florida in 2005, my life has undergone a number of changes, many good, a few not so much. But one thing that has changed is that my horizons have been broadened in two specific areas - multi-ethnic churches (I served one for nine years), and church planting (my District got me interested in this, and it is now a passion of mine).
     I should add that I have also lived in several multi-ethnic apartment complexes, sung in a multi-ethnic community worship choir, got involved in our denomination's intercultural programming, and am now married to a lovely lady of another culture.
     My goal is to encourage the planting and multiplying of new churches and to push us toward being intentional about these new churches being multi-ethnic and intercultural. Of course, I also want to see our established churches become intentional in this area as well.
     Future blogs will give Scriptural support for these things and get us thinking about why and how we are to be doing this. From time to time, I may address other topics of a more devotional nature.
     I want to be available to the wider church to help in any way that I can to get us to where our churches more and more look like the communities in which we live right now and like the home to which we are going, if we trust Christ, in the near future. Your prayers and invitations will be appreciated.