Select Page

Book – Love the Church; Bless the Nations

by | Sep 4, 2007 | Books, Church, Leadership, Missions |

Book_love_churchI just finished a book by George Miley called Loving the Church; Blessing the Nations — Pursuing the Role of Local Churches in Global Missions.  George’s wife is a Jewish refugee who fled Germany before her parents were killed in the holocaust.

George calls his book at "manifesto" of the Antioch Network, which he founded in 1987.

Here are a number of concepts from the book that struck me:

  • God’s plan for the world was given to Abraham: "all the nations of the earth will be blessed."
  • Object_earth_2
    The Joshua Project lists:

    • 15,964 biblical "nations" (i.e. ethno-cultural people groups)
    • 6,429 "unreached" people groups (i.e. no viable indigenous community of believing Christians to evangelize their own people)
  • To accomplish our mission of loving the nations with the good news of Jesus, we need:
    • A high view (the central role) of the local church
    • A church that is wholly given to prayer
    • A church that supports fewer missionaries, but supports those in a greater way
    • A church that adopts one unreached people group & focuses on showing love to them
    • A church that sends out teams of people as seen in the church at Antioch in Acts 13:1-4
    • A church that has the goal of planting indigenous churches

People_von_zinzendorf
He also told the story of another of my heroes of Christianity: The Moravians (from the area of the modern Czech Republic) who traveled to Hernnhut (in Halle, Germany) to a land donated by young Count Von Zinzendorf ("Master V-Z").  This was a church that experienced a unique move of God starting in 1732.  They…

  • Only had 600 people
  • Held a round-the-clock 24×7 prayer meeting for 100 years
  • Sent out 300 cross-cultural missionaries (more than all Protestant Churches before them combined)
  • Developed businesses to release more resources for cross-cultural teams