New Around the Mission

Mission Mondays Spark Passion for Disciple-Making

February 27, 2011

Six months ago, the Rev. Chris Zoephel and Deacon Ben Fisher began praying each week for God to inspire their congregation, Holy Trinity Church in Meridian, Idaho, to become more mission-minded.

Chris Zoephel and family

“In general, we had started to attract white middle-class and upper-class folks with an intellectual bent,” Zoephel says. “While there’s nothing wrong with that, we wanted to love our congregation enough to challenge them and get them focused on making disciples like Jesus wants.”

Instead of a new vision statement or strategy, Zoephel simply invited the church to experience God’s heart for missions one Monday night a month. On Mission Mondays, staff and parishioners gather in a home for a time of intercession for the lost, and a short teaching on a missional principle from scripture.

“The very first meeting, God’s tangible presence in the room was incredible,” Zoephel recalls.

And in the next few months, Mission Mondays took on a life of their own.

“We started to see results around Christmas,” Zoephel reports. “Our preaching and teaching began to be shaped by God’s heart for missions. And during Sunday services, people were weeping and coming up and confessing. Our home groups in the Valley became open to anybody joining, and open to multiplying when they get big enough. We have a family who wants to do a Vacation Bible School for their neighborhood.”

Community-focused ministries like Holy Trinity’s new food pantry also sprang up. Zoephel began an outreach called “Theology on Tap,” an open forum for people to ask questions over beer at a neutral location like a bar, pub, or brewery.

“We’ve been discussing questions like, ‘Does Jesus hate homosexuals?’ ‘Is Jesus a bigot?’ ‘Is Jesus God?’” Zoephel says. Through these conversations, he’s formed relationships with men he hopes to start meeting with on a weekly basis.

Just last week, Holy Trinity started a missional fellowship of leaders called Renew Treasure Valley. This group of leaders seeks to participate in God’s work in the Valley, an area containing more than half of Idaho’s population and all its major universities, in hopes of planting parishes in every town through a cathedral system.

“It is incredible, all directly related to the work of Mission Mondays,” Zoephel says. “It shows us that God is more passionate about the lost than we are, and He’s the one who has already been at work here.”

Learn more about God’s missional work at Holy Trinity.

Posted By: Cynthia P. Brust
Categories: Faith in Action