On a continent ‘becoming more and more the mission field,’ ONA offers leadership

“There are a handful of things that I want to see before I’m done,” says the Rev. Morrie Lawing, executive director of Outreach North America (ONA) and a 1993 graduate of Erskine Theological Seminary. “One is that, when I ask a member of a church session about their missions effort … I want them to ask, ‘do you mean our foreign missions effort or our domestic missions effort?’”

Lawing’s passion to see the Gospel carried to the ends of the earth begins not with far-off lands, but with our own, which “is becoming more and more the mission field,” he says.

ONA, the domestic missions agency of the ARP Church, supports congregations across North America by guiding and offering resources in the areas of church planting, revitalization, and evangelism. Lawing’s job is to spearhead and coordinate this work—a role he did not anticipate during nearly 40 years of congregational ministry.

A former member of the Erskine Board of Trustees, Lawing has served as a pastor in Florida and North Carolina, most recently in North Charlotte. “I had been there for 18 or more years and was fairly content,” he recalls. “We were looking to call an associate and build another building, so I was not looking for another job.”

When ONA asked Lawing to apply for the job of Executive Director, his session encouraged him. Chosen unanimously, he was offered the option to take up his duties without relocating. “They were making it such that I almost couldn’t help but take the job,” he says, and “there were a lot of confirmations along the way.” After prayerful consideration, he and his wife Lori concluded that it was God’s will for him to accept the position.

Lawing’s background had readied him for the new role, and his vision for a healthy local church had been important to him from the outset of his career.

Before he was a pastor, he served as a Young Life volunteer in Greenville, South Carolina, then heard about an opportunity to become a Young Life Church Partner and went to work for the Rev. Jim Corbett at Devenger Road ARP Church in Greer, South Carolina, as a youth director. “Jim was quite the mentor to me—he was my hero in so many ways.” It was Corbett who initially encouraged Lawing to pursue a seminary education at Erskine.

“Interestingly enough, in God’s providence, he was sitting in this seat that I currently hold 33 years ago,” Lawing says, referring to his ONA position.

While he studied at Erskine Seminary, Lawing remained in Greenville, thankful for the opportunity to continue the work he had begun at Devenger Road. “I was at the seminary with men like Bobby Elliot, Rob Patrick, Chad Reynolds and, you know, some other old guys like me,” says Lawing, grinning as he remembers his friends.

Lawing speaks appreciatively about several of his seminary professors. He credits the late Dr. William F.H. Kuykendall with laying a foundation for him in Old Testament and Hebrew. Classes taught by the late Dr. John Carson, who later served as president of Erskine, were “a blessing … informed by a man just living the faithful life of the Christian walk.” The late Rev. Ray King, whom he describes as “the ARP’s resident historian,” and “a kind man,” also made a lasting impression on him.

Lawing began his pastoral career at Bartow ARP Church in Florida, then gained experience in home missions by planting a church in South Charlotte and then another in North Charlotte, his most recent call before his move to ONA. Some might think that as executive director of ONA, Lawing is now engaged in full-time church-planting.

“We don’t plant churches,” he says, stressing that ONA comes alongside the presbyteries but does not take over their work. In assisting an individual church, everything is done through and with the approval of the governing presbytery. Lawing is enthusiastic about ONA’s three areas of focus—church planting, revitalization, and evangelism.

In the area of church planting, “I am very convinced that the model we should be using is a mother-daughter relationship,” Lawing says. A church in its infancy has a much better chance of reaching healthy adulthood if it has a “parent church” willing to nurture it until it can stand on its own. This model affords more safety than sending out one man to build a church from the ground up. “I think knowing that relationship exists in the church planting division is extremely important,” he says.

Commenting on ONA’s work of revitalization, Lawing says, “In some ways the churches that are in need of revitalization are churches that need to see themselves as church plants,” and they can benefit from both teachability and reinvention. “We need leaders, elders specifically, to say, ‘let’s not be who we have been in the past…if we don’t change our trajectory, we will die—so let us consider life and how the Lord might be pleased.’”

Regarding the importance of evangelism, Lawing says that ministers committed to evangelism “want to see the lost come to know Jesus,” and explains, “It’s not just about—or even maybe primarily about—ARP churches getting started. It’s about the Kingdom of the Lord advancing and seeing new people come into that Kingdom.”

One of the greatest struggles ONA faces, Lawing explains, is the church member’s tendency to “think that when it’s ‘over there’ I can give money and pray, but when it’s ‘over here,’ that’s a little too close.” But proximity should not preclude support. In the early church, he says, letters written by the apostles were “carried around to be read” among churches which were “a reasonable distance from each other.”

Lawing believes Christians are no less “strangers” in North America for having been born here. His prayer is that God will send laborers into His harvest, beginning with faithful men and women who see themselves as missionaries even when they are most at home.

The Rev. Morrison Van Lawing, Jr., shown at top, and his wife Lori are the parents of five children, including two who attended Erskine College—Paul, a 2021 graduate who served as president of his class, and AnnMarie.