Inter-America: Adventist Mission director prescribes Jesus method to evangelize urban areas

May 3, 2012 – Miami, Florida, United States…Libna Stevens/IAD

“The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a rural church, and we have not been putting our resources, our people into urban areas,” said Pastor Gary Krause, Adventist Mission director for the Adventist world church, to more than one hundred top leaders from throughout the church in Inter-America. Krause was addressing church leaders from throughout the 21 church regions during the territory’s first Urban Ministries Summit held in Miami, Florida, May 1-2, 2012.

For a church with more than 150 years of existence, said Krause, “our methods have not been working in the large cities.” He reminded leaders that the Adventist Church is built on men and women who have pushed in deep waters for Jesus and that it is time to use Christ’s method of reaching people in the cities and ensuring churches and institutions become centers of influence in the community.

It’s about making the message meaningful and accessible to so many people from different cultural backgrounds, said Krause. “Too many times we think we know what people want,” he added. It’s about understanding communities and filling those needs.

Krause asked, “What does the church offer? How do we bring people from the community into the church?” He answered, “Good music, attractive events, good preaching, and a friendly church may attract people. Yet in society today, people in large cities have become more secularized and with that many barriers such as history, culture and more stop them from coming into a Christian culture and the church.

“Instead of expecting them to come to us, we go to them like Jesus did,” emphasized Krause. “The church is not just a destination; the role of the church is to equip, train and empower its members to be in the community.”

The Jesus method alone will bring people into the church, according to Krause. “Jesus mingled, showed sympathy, He ministered to needs, won confidence and bid people to follow Him.”

For the most part, the church likes to skip these four methods, said Krause. “It takes a long time, it can get messy, it means that I have to invest myself in people and the community,” he said. Yet the Christ method will provide strong hope, significant purpose, secure love, and in turn diminishing apostasy rates among the church, he continued.

Krause encouraged leaders to challenge local leaders in their territories to commit to identifying the needs of the community and bring the ministries of the church and its departments to join forces in connecting and ensuring that urban centers of influence are created within each community.

“Those churches involved in the community are the ones that are growing and in contact with the world,” said Krause.

Top church leaders from Inter-America were trained by a group of experts for two days on how to connect with the community and inspire their local leaders for further focus and implementing urban mission strategies.

For more information on IAD’s Urban Ministries Summit, visit www.interamerica.org

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