A Hmong funeral and cross-cultural ministry
The Covenant website has a good story on a pastor and congregation in St Paul, Minnesota that struggled to figure out the appropriate way to do a funeral for a Hmong patriarch -- a very complicated issue. It illustrates two trends that I've been pontificating on for a few years:

1. The blurring of the distinction between missionary and pastor

2. The globalization of the local congregation's ministry

The task of the pastor in St Paul (and a growing number of other places in the country) has a lot in common with that of the missionary in Thailand or Laos. On so many levels we've got to learn from the missionaries if we're going to be faithful servants of Christ in this era. Anne Vining figured that out.

In regard to globalization -- throughout most of the 20th century evangelicals sent missionaries who could go abroad because "we can't all go." But things have changed. What do we do now that the world has come to us? We can't pretend that cross-cultural ministry is something that only the elite Christian does in a foreign place. All congregations need to begin to see themselves as cross-cultural missionary operations. That has got to become a part of our DNA -- and not just the DNA of the missionaries that we send abroad.

There are all kinds of related connections that develop and the boundaries between the local congregation and the church abroad grows increasingly fluid. As local churches become more cross-cultural in their orientation they develop contacts of their own in other countries, send local congregants abroad for short-term and long-term stints, and initiate their own missionary work.

This ultimately moves the denominational department of world mission more into an advisory and support role for the local congregation -- reversing the historical approach where the department saw the local congregation as an entity needed to support THEIR work abroad. It all becomes fluid and messy from an organizational standpoint and the primary role of the denominational structure is no longer trying to direct a collective mission or to whip up enthusiasm for the mission project of the year, but to maintain a network which links millions of local mission nodes -- decentralization -- not by our design but simply reflecting the reality of a very flat world.