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As an expert on mobilizing churches to be more effective in world evangelism, missions consultant Tom Telford holds workshops and speaks to churches throughout the United States. He’s completing work on his second book on the subject. He guest lectures at seminaries.

So what could a former pro baseball umpire who’s never been a missionary or even attended Bible school possibly know about how evangelicals can best reach the world for Christ?

The answer lies in Telford’s upbringing as a missions-minded pastor’s son-and in God’s opening doors to learn at the feet of giants. “The churches my dad pastored that I was raised in all … gave 50 percent of their money to missions. They produced missionaries,” Telford said. The parsonage where he grew up was a revolving door of visiting missionaries. MKs home on furlough became Telford’s best friends. “As far as formal education, I’ve learned it all inside the church or from church people.”

Those “church people” include Ralph Winter and Don Richardson. After leaving umpiring and the umpire’s school he started, he found himself plopped in the chairmanship of his father’s church’s missions committee. Then he attended the first conference of Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment (ACMC). “That’s where I made the commitment that I’d do whatever (God) wanted me to do.”

That “whatever” proved to be traveling the United States and world as ACMC’s director of regional ministries and northeast regional director. Since 1997 he’s been vice president of mobilization for United World Mission and has written a book, Missions in the 21st Century (Harold Shaw, 1998), all to guide churches in the task of getting the gospel to the ends of creation.

His home phone and e-mail inbox act as a 911 for missions churches. “I get calls like, ‘Tom, I read your book,’ or, ‘Tom, I listened to your tape,’ or ‘I was at an ACMC conference and heard you preach,'” Telford said. “‘Our church is going nowhere in missions. Can you come and light some fires in our church?’

“Or like a call I got a call yesterday: ‘We’ve got a $600,000 missions budget and we don’t know where it’s going. We heard about you and would like for you to help us.'” Telford aims to make a difference in churches where he ministers, so he places conditions on his visits. “Every missions conference I go to, I tell them I’m not just coming to speak on Sunday morning,” he said. “If I can’t meet with your leaders, I won’t bother coming.”

Telford’s typical week includes meeting with missions committees two nights and speaking at a missions conference. He reviews a church’s written programs. And he spends lots of time answering questions. “What any church wants to do, I’ve seen it done somewhere else,” he said. “They may say, ‘We want more accountability from missionaries,’ and I can say, ‘Here are five churches that have really good accountability programs.'” In fact, answering those questions is his favorite part of helping churches. What do churches most want to know?

“Number one, people are just saying, ‘How do we turn on the average guy in the pew to missions?'” Telford said. “I usually tell them you’ve got to create hands-on opportunities.”

That’s because Boomer, Buster, and Generation-X people born after 1945 want to see, feel, taste, and touch missions for themselves, and the best way to do that is through short-term mission trips for churchgoers of all ages. “The Builders, the older crowd, were willing to watch an old slide show, pray and pay, but that isn’t the way it is for the average person today.”

Churches are on the same page with Telford, who cites a Pasadena, Calif., church whose pastor has challenged all 7,000 members to go on a short-term trip in the next five years. To that end, he offered one entire Sunday’s pulpit to three teams who presented trip reports- senior citizens, Boomers, and Xers. “I see that having a big effect,” Telford said. When asked why such stress is placed on members going to the field, the pastor told him, “‘If I get 7,000 people to go over the next five years, I’ll never have trouble raising money for missions [or] getting people to pray.’

“I’m convinced he’s right. When people go overseas, there’s a personal involvement. Involvement breeds commitment.” Among other common questions churches ask is how to be more effective, more strategic, and how to create an accountability structure for their missionaries. “I never heard those questions my first five to eight years at ACMC. And out of that comes, ‘How are we going to do that?’ I see a lot of churches saying, ‘We’re giving more and more money to missionaries. We want to know what they’re doing.’ I’ve seen churches give missionaries contracts that they have to sign.” Such contracts, signed by the missionary, home church, and sending agency, specify the numbers of prayer letters a missionary must write, and require that the missionary list six-month objectives and write other reports.

Contracts for missionaries sound unspiritual, but Telford, who is himself on missionary support, has signed several with churches that support him. Rather than checking up on one’s work, contracts help missionaries be more effective by forcing them to specify goals. He plans to include in his next book the best church-missionary contract that he’s seen.

“(Churches doing this) are saying that missions is important,” Telford said. “There’s nothing more important than winning people to Christ.”

See Deann Alford’s “InterView” with Tom Telford, as well as her earlier discussions with him in the August 18 and October 6 issues last year, as well as the August 21, 1998, edition.