The Sending Church

Kyle Goen, LifePoint Exec. Pastor, Team Leader

LifePoint Church in Smyrna, TN is a sending church. They send teams of people on mission trips around the world. While many churches tend to outsource the sending and organization of missionaries and resources, LifePoint maintains direct involvement in what their people do overseas, from selection of qualified people to exploration of potential mission fields. It turns out that taking responsibility for these things- the little things usually left to the “professionals”- can be formative to a church’s perspective on ministry at home. Being missional, LifePoint demonstrates, is much easier if you are a missionary.

Tonight we spoke to a Lifepoint group that’s headed to Belgium. For them, this is a short-term trip with a long-term vision for churchwide engagement of the Flemish-speaking Belgian people. We rambled on with advice and ideas for a couple hours, and then prayed for the team. We look forward to hearing about the trip and continuing to help where we can with insight and connections. For more information about Lifepoint and their many missions endeavors, visit LifePointChurch.org

By the way, the Upstream Collective will be partnering with LifePoint, Smynra on “The Sending Church” conference in February of 2010. Watch this space for details.