US MB Conference focuses on growth

LA MIRADA, CALIF.

In 1994, the US Conference decided to establish Mission USA in order to focus the Conference's efforts on evangelism and church planting. (Until that time, church planting had been largely the responsibility of the district MB conferences.) At the 1996 convention, Ed Boschman was appointed executive director of Mission USA. At this convention, Mission USA reported that four churches have now been planted:

* Copper Hills Community Church in Phoenix, Ariz. is the flagship church plant, with Boschman, pastor Brad Klassen and worship pastor Wayne Loewen already having gathered a congregation that averages over 100 in attendance.

* Rolling Hills Church in Papillion, Neb. is a a joint plant of Mission USA and the Central District MB Conference. It meets in a Christian music store.

* Journey Community Church in La Mirada is a cell church composed of about 40 people in their 20s and 30s. It was adopted by Mission USA in March 1998 and is led by Durwin and Beverlee Keck.

* A church plant is just getting under way this fall in Draper, Utah, the first evangelical church in a heavily Mormon area. This church is led by Paul Robie and is a joint project of Mission USA, the Pacific District Conference and Laurelglen Bible Church of Bakersfield, Calif.

Mission USA's next project is a church plant in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn., in conjunction with the Central District Conference.

Mission USA also helps a number of existing churches refocus for outreach. These "target churches" include:

* Memorial Road MB Church in Edmond, Okla., which is establishing small groups and reaching out to the community.

* Pine Acres MB Church in Weatherford, Okla., which added a worship pastor and developed a new ministry focus.

* Faith Bible Church in Omaha, Neb., which became a multicongregational church and formed a ministry corporation called Good Neighbor Ministries to meet needs in its inner-city neighbourhood.

Mission USA has also formed a partnership with Church Resource Ministries to help establish Refocusing networks for pastors and churches and to help churches analyze their ministries. So far, 28 churches have done the self-analysis; of the eight areas analyzed, the areas of greatest weakness were discipleship and church structures. These are the same Refocusing and church analysis tools that the Canadian MB Conference is using.

Integration

Expanding ethnic congregations are supervised not by Mission USA but by Integrated Ministries, an agency of the Board of Church Ministries, the central US MB Conference board. In addition to a large number of Hispanic congregations and the black North Carolina Conference, the US Conference has seen the addition of several new groups in recent years:

* A considerable number of Slavic/Russian congregations, some of them quite large, have joined the Conference. One of them, the Slavic Missionary Church in Seattle, Wash. reported at the convention that it had planted 20 churches in Russia since 1993.

* A Korean MB church, Joong Ang Korean Church, provided the Saturday evening meal at the convention. This congregation is doing health and relief work in North Korea through Mennonite Central Committee and the Christian Medical Welfare Mission. At one point in the convention, a Slavic mixed quartet surrounded by Korean praise motion dancers led the convention in singing "Shine, Jesus, Shine" in a variety of languages.

* Takao Nakamura is planting a Japanese MB church in Bonita, Calif. as a missionary of the Japan MB Conference.

* Bethel Ethiopian Church in Seattle, Wash. shares a building with a Slavic congregation and now has services in Ethiopian and English.

There was also a Canadian flavour to the convention. Mission USA director Ed Boschman and Copper Hills pastors Klassen and Loewen have all pastored in Canada.

The Board of Church Ministries presented two pamphlets prepared by the Canadian MB Conference Board of Faith and Life (on homosexuality and gambling) for use in the US Conference.

Speaker for the convention was Pierre Gilbert of Quebec, now a professor of Old Testament at MB Biblical Seminary in Fresno, Calif. In three messages, he encouraged the convention to celebrate Jesus as Lord, celebrate a new identity and celebrate a new partnership with God, from I Peter 2:4-12.

The convention, after gradually declining from attendance of 455 adults in 1986 to 212 adults in 1996, increased slightly to 216 adults this year.

The Conference finished the 1997-98 year with a surplus of $754, even though Conference expenses increased dramatically to $541,342. With few dissenting votes, the Conference adopted an even larger budget of $649,910 for 1998-99, a furher increase of 20%. This will require a 9% increase in direct contributions from the churches (to $310,000) and an even larger increase in fundraising (to $266,410). Most of the increase will go to Mission USA.

from reports in The Christian Leader

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