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November 1987 It's Happening: More and More People are Caught Up in the "Generic," Overall Cause of Missions Generic Missions Promotion Larry Walker Style ACMC: Bringing it Down to the Grass Roots Mission Policy and Strategy Statements
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Generic Missions Promotion Larry Walker Style —John Holzmann Larry Walker is a staff member of Fellowship Bible Church in Dallas, Texas. He is also a “Last $1000” coordinator for the U.S. Center for World Mission, a Perspectives class coordinator, and the south-central regional coordinator for ACMC. He said a man came up to him once and said, “You’re the first generic missions person I’ve met. You’re not promoting any one ministry; you’re promoting missions.” Walker began his career as a “generic missions person” when, during a furlough that began in 1981 and that has not yet ended, he started recruiting missionaries. “I realized I could go back to Guatemala and continue the work I’d begun, but if I could recruit others, I could multiply myself. Instead of being one person alone, I’d fill a number of slots.” But by mid-1985, with a number of new missionary recruits on their way to the field, Walker was becoming frustrated because “as I attracted more and more missionaries, I realized our church couldn’t support them all.” In January 1986 Walker heard of the U.S. Center for World Mission’s Perspectives course. Thinking it would be “fun and strategic” to lead such classes, he attended the February ’86 Perspectives Coordinators Workshop where, for the first time, he said, he was “exposed to the whole missions movement mentality.” “One evening Dr. Winter said, ‘Some of you will have to stay here (in the U.S.). The problem is not finding people to go. The bottleneck is in local churches willing to stand behind them. We need people who are able to mobilize local churches.’” Walker, already a member of the ACMC south-central regional steering committee, thought ACMC would be a perfect vehicle for mobilizing churches. When he presented his ideas, the steering committee agreed, and have since sponsored a Perspectives course and begun a Concerts of Prayer movement. The three most important tools for mobilizing churches as far as Walker is concerned are, for vision and education: the U.S. Center’s Perspectives course and Year of Vision. For carrying out the vision: the management tools that ACMC provides. And for the power to make it happen: “Dave Bryant’s Concerts of Prayer.” The bottom line, says Walker, is that “missions is a spiritual issue; there’s never been a mission movement without concerted prayer.” Besides promoting the tools and programs these three groups have to offer, Walker has his sights on establishing a regional center for world mission in Dallas, and a regional mission training center “Right now we’re sending missionaries out who don’t know how to learn a new culture. They either bail out on their first term, or are not as effective as they could be.” He believes a training center where people can “learn how to learn a new culture and how to plant a church” could help. Walker also hopes to replicate himself a dozen times by training 12 more “generic” ACMC representatives. Already, he says, he has four men who are working with him and two who are praying about it. Another Walker vision is for mission mobilization teams similar to those sponsored by Caleb Resources at the U.S. Center for World Mission. Rather than recruiting missionaries, however, these teams would specialize in mobilizing churches. Last but not least, Walker wants to see a regional director for ACMC: “a full-time guy to multiply mission-minded churches.” By the year 2000, he wants to have raised up 100,000 World Christians—200 of them from his church. He also wants to raise $100 million in loose change offerings. A World Christian, he says, is a person who uses the Global Prayer Digest five minutes every day to pray for missions and unreached groups, who saves his loose change for frontier causes, and who attends a Frontier or World Christian Fellowship meeting at least once a month. “We’ve already begun in our church,” he said. “We’ve adopted the Kurdish people. We’re praying for a couple to go from our midst; and we have started a loose change program to support the project at least three-fourths.”
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