God's Travel Agent

On Monday, LaRissa and I, along with our friends Mark and Bridgette, had an exciting meeting that represents a significant next step toward the vision of The Crossroads. We met with God's Travel Agent, Tiffany Smith. Okay, that's not really her title. Officially, she is "Missions Mobilization Associate" for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Her responsibilities encompass learning about missions efforts around the world, identifying needs, connecting with missionaries, and mobilizing mission teams from within the state of Texas to go all over the world to carry out the Great Commission. Tiffany is also passionate about what she does, and she has an infectious joy that spills over to others. Our wonderful, mission-minded, team of believers at The Crossroads have fallen in love with Tiffany and affectionately gave her the nickname "God's Travel Agent" because that really is what she does.

One of the central elements of the vision of The Crossroads is a passion for taking the gospel to the ends of the earth, for significantly impacting the world for the kingdom, and for seeing the fulfilment of the Great Commission in our lifetime. One of the pieces of that is identifying an unreached or unengaged people group (UPG or UEG) and adopting them as our own as a church. Now, for definitions. An unreached people group is a people group (group of people who share the same culture and same language) in which less than 2% of the population is Christian. An unengaged people group is a people group in which there are no Christians. For most of these people groups, they do not have the bible in their language and do not have a sustainable Christian movement. To make it easier to understand, if you live in one of these people groups, there is a great likelihood that you will be born, live your life, and die without ever even hearing the name of Jesus Christ. The task of fulfilling the Great Commission is really about penetrating these groups with the gospel.

So, the missions strategy for The Crossroads involves more than just taking sporadic mission trips to different parts of the world and feeling good about doing something. We want to be much more strategic. Our vision is to identify and adopt an unreached people group that we will do everything we can to reach that people group with the gospel and be a part of creating a sustainable church planting movement within that people group.

Our meeting with Tiffany was the first step in that process. We met with Tiffany to learn about how we can discover UPGs and UEGs, learn more about them, and begin the process of identifying which people group we will adopt as our own. We also talked to her about what adopting a people group would actually mean in terms of what we do, how to connect with a missionary who is trying to reach a UPG or UEG, and how we financially support people who are willing to go on mission.

This is just the beginning of the process, but it is an exciting start. We are so thankful for a great resource like Tiffany and for a church with a passion for reaching the world for Christ. We are truly blessed as a church because we are already light years ahead of where most churches are at this point.