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Hail To The New Chief at Oklahoma Christian University

August 29, 2012 by Mark Woodward

Today I marched in the processional among the Professor Emeritii (the really old guys!)for the inauguration ceremony of Dr. John deSteiguer as the seventh president of Oklahoma Christian University.  Sherrylee and I made a special trip to Oklahoma City for this ceremony, not only because we have many friends there, but because we believe in what Oklahoma Christian is and does!

In 1964, my parents took me on a rainy day to Oklahoma City to have a look at Oklahoma Christian College. I had never seen so much red mud in all my life. The college—as I remember it–was just four buildings in the middle of nowhere!

I did not choose to go there—until 1979, when I began my teaching career as an instructor on a one-year, temporary contract.  That year turned into twenty-four, twenty-four years with wonderful colleagues, thousands of students, and way too many freshmen essays to read!  We loved our years at OC!

Dr. J. Terry Johnson was the president when we came in 1979.  In 1996, after 22 years, he stepped down, and was followed by Kevin Jacobs and Alfred Branch in a transitional time for the university.

Dr. Mike O’Neal left Pepperdine and became OC’s sixth president in 2002. Mike, a good friend from Harding days, brought financial stability to the institution, and left many new buildings and stronger academic programs. He retired this year from office with the gratitude of the OC community.

President deSteiguer steps into office when OC has an excellent enrollment of about 2,250 students from fifty-six countries.  With the enthusiasm that he is bringing to the office, I can’t imagine anything but growth in the future of OC.

I wish there were space to list all the academic achievements of this outstanding university, but you should know that OC was named a “Best University—Master’s in the western region in U.S. News and World Report’s “America’s Best Colleges.”  OC has excellent programs in Language and Literature, History and Political Science, Biology (95% medical and graduate school placement), 3 ABET accredited engineering programs (very rare!), and a Gaming and Animation program that was selected as one of the top undergraduate programs by Princeton Review.

Well, you can tell that I am very proud of Oklahoma Christian, and I believe that the Board of Trustees has selected an outstanding man as its new president. He has a proven track record professionally, but his family and his personal life are shaped by a deep and evident faith in God.  Above all, his professed dependence upon God is what gives me confidence in the future of Oklahoma Christian.

Congratulations, President deSteiguer.  Our prayers are with you!

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Fridays With Isaiah: Isaiah 3 – On Leadership!

August 25, 2012 by Mark Woodward

The fact that Leadership is such a big topic now frightens me after reading and thinking about Isaiah 3 this week!

Isaiah 3:1-7  –  “the Lord Almighty will take away . . . everything they depend on”

As Isaiah prophesies concerning the fall of Jerusalem and Judah—which would occur about fifty years later–not only do the signs of the catastrophe but the means of destruction include the absence of real leaders for the community.  Look at the list of leader-types that are missing because of Israel’s failure to follow the Lord Almighty!

  • Heroes
  • Warriors
  • Judges
  • Prophets
  • Elders
  • High officials
  • Leaders of fifty (could be either civilian or military. Let’s just say community leaders.)
  • Counselors/Advisors
  • Skilled craftsmen
  • And even the astrologers and fortune-tellers who, though forbidden, had large followings

Compare this list of absent leaders to our own time:  We certainly live in the age of the anti-hero.  Our judges and political officials do not inspire great confidence. Where does one turn today for leadership and have categorical confidence in that group? Church leaders? Educational leaders? Military leaders? Union leaders?  Societal  or cultural leaders?

So what happens when such a leadership vacuum exists? People start turning to non-leaders and asking them to lead.

The Youth start leading! What young people want rules the day! “I will make boys their leaders, and toddlers their rulers.”  Well, that doesn’t work in Isaiah’s day because it results in social disaster: “man against man; neighbor against neighbor; young insulting their elders and vulgar people sneering at the honorable.” (v.5) I’m not sure that a society—including a church community—should be built on the immature desires of youth.  Isn’t that what Isaiah is saying here?

Or those with more stuff are chosen to rule! “Since you have a coat, you be our leader.”  But those with More Stuff  refuse because it is not in their own best interest. They are taking care of themselves first.

“Oh my people, your leaders mislead you; they send you down the wrong road.” (v.12)  And, as is always the case, the poor suffer the most because those with coats and contrived leadership oppress them, an abuse of power that leads to general destruction of the society—under which the poor suffer even more.

Isaiah 3: 16-26 – “The women of Zion are haughty.”

I bet this section got Isaiah into big trouble.  I found it fascinating because in railing against the haughtiness of women, Isaiah acknowledges the impact of women even in that very patriarchal society.  Why mention the women of Zion if they had no influence!

But they did. (See v. 12). They had stepped into the vacuum and had done no better than the men. The very graphic picture that Isaiah draws of bejeweled women, “craning with their necks, flirting with their eyes, walking with dainty steps, tinkling their ankle bracelets,” all seems intended to show the same kind of misplaced sense of what real leadership looks like.

Just as the Lord stripped away from Judah the male leadership that had abandoned His Way, he does the same with the women who flaunt their beauty and sexuality for power and control—again sounding very much like our day, doesn’t it!  The Lord Almighty strips Zion’s women of “everything that makes her beautiful”(v. 18). . . .”Instead of smelling of sweet perfume, she will stink. . . .Shame will replace her beauty” (v.24).

Conclusion

If Jerusalem’s false and vacuous leadership resulted in its destruction, then shouldn’t the titanic number of words bemoaning, attacking, and attempting to generate leadership in our age sound like a warning to us?

The warnings of Isaiah point all of us back to God’s leadership. There is no other that will not lead to destruction.

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We Need New Words – Part 2

August 22, 2012 by Mark Woodward

 

Just today, I heard from a friend about a fine young person just returned from teaching in China. This young man was eager to return for a second year, but was very frustrated because he felt like he did not know how to move from being friends with the Chinese to talking about faith in God and Jesus.

 

I also received comments from the “We Need New Words” blog from experienced missionaries and others who also wanted to know how to bridge the expanse between friendly conversations and conversations about God or faith.

 

In other words, we love God and we love our neighbors.  We know how to show compassion to those in need, but we are speechless and frustrated when it comes to initiating conversations with those same people about faith.

 

First, let’s talk about why this might be a problem for us.

 

  • We are afraid of being rejected or looking foolish.  Nothing new here.
  • We have been convinced (by watching TV/movies) that conversations about faith are culturally inappropriate and out of the cultural mainstream.  However, CNN has a religion blog; TV series like “Friday Night Lights” include Christian characters—yes, some representations portray the “Christians” as pretty weird, but the President invokes God and lots of people read Max Lucado. Even American Idol has included professing believers. Christians are not as absent from popular culture as you might think.
  • We have very little experience initiating serious conversations. Most conversations we have are very superficial.  
  • Some Christians no longer believe that trust in God/Jesus is necessary/essential. This comes from either a kind of universalism (universal salvation) or just pure ignorance of the Word.
  • We don’t know how. Nobody has ever taught us how.

 

This last reason is absolutely legitimate. If you have never seen your parents have a serious talk with someone; if you have never had a mentor show you how they initiate a conversation; how can you possibly know how to do this without someone to emulate?

 

OK, here are some examples of ways people get into conversations without being offensive.

 

I have a good friend who intentionally found a reply to a mundane question that often leads to very comfortable conversations about faith.  When someone says, “Bill, how are you?”   he always replies, “Blessed!”   That’s it.  He has done this for years and it is just out of the ordinary enough that people take notice.  Often people seek him out for more information about faith, about his life, about why he said that . . . and there you have created an environment where people ask you about your faith.

 

I think your little phrase could also be an “email signature” that was a good, somewhat neutral Bible verse, like, “Mercy triumphs over judgment” and people will come to you and ask where that came from—which opens the door for a conversation.

 

It might be a lapel pin or a Facebook picture or just about anything that is just slightly out of the ordinary so that people ask about it.  I recently heard about a woman who had JESUS tattooed on the arm that she served tables with in a bar, so that people would ask her about her tattoo.

 

I’ve also found that you can ask people if they go to church somewhere—especially new people—or do they have a church home—in the same sentences as you ask where they work or where the kids go to school.  Just throw it in without blinking and you’ll see that they usually just give you an honest reply that tells you whether to extend the conversation or not.

 

The key is to be intentional. Do something intentionally, and then be ready when someone responds to your initiative.

 

The main thing is to do something! I spoke with a young man from Syria who is a Christian today because an older man from Texarkana, Texas, decided to go on his own and pass out Christian tracts in front of a mosque on Fridays in Damascus!  This young man’s father came out of the mosque, saw this crazy Texas Christian and was actually afraid for him, so he went up to him and invited him to come to his home.  The Texas guy went with him, they became good friends, and eventually the whole family became Christians.

 

I’m not recommending this method of evangelism, but I think it is a great example of God using the foolishness of our feeble efforts to accomplish marvelous things in the lives of the people who are searching for Him.

 

Don’t be afraid.  Don’t believe that no one wants to know about Jesus. Don’t wait for a Ph.D in sharing your faith.  Just think of some small thing to do that might lead to someone asking you if you are a Christian.  That’ enough for today.

 

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We Need New Words!

August 20, 2012 by Mark Woodward

I’m in Arkansas today, driving to Searcy to work with a small group of young people who have committed to go to Italy for two years in the Avanti Italia program. One of their main activities will include  . . . . I don’t even know what to call it anymore!  And that’s part of the problem.

We used to call it either personal evangelism or personal work. If we did it in a group or in a concentrated way, the same activity was called campaigning.  When I was a boy and my parents were doing it, they called it conducting cottage Bible classes—and I don’t have a clue where the cottage part of that came from, but I suspect it was the same place as in the old song that starts with the line, ”I’m satisfied with just a cottage below . . . .”

Somewhere in the 80s and 90s, any phrase that used the word evangelism took on a negative connotation, so the same activity was described as outreach.  With the new millennium though, we must have needed a new word, so if this activity is talked about at all, it always is described, not named, and it always includes the word sharing.  Faith sharing or sharing my faith seem to have been the most common that I hear.

More recently, the trend seems away from talking about faith and has turned to telling my story, sometimes sharing my story, and if we need to objectify it a bit more, we leave out the my and just tell the story.

Of course, the words we use change with both what we do and how we do it.  Here’s a quick and very subjective description of our methods of doing whatever it is we don’t have good words for!

  1. New people were brought the gospel and converted by the sword!  As the Crusaders went through countries, they converted people or killed them.  The conquistadors/soldier priests did the same thing .  Or your king became a Christian—or a certain kind of Christian–and if you wanted to live in his country, you did too—a la, European Christianity after the Reformation.  This is a quick, though painful way, to make lots of new Christians—or at least church members. I’m not so sure about whether people became Christians.
  2. In the New World,  education was the way people were converted. Schools were started to teach reading, so that people could read the Bible and be Christians. Natives were civilized and Christianized as if those two were one and the same activities.
  3. The 1800s were the time of great revivalism. Great preaching was the means of conversion for most people. Tent meetings and gospel meetings lasted for weeks—months—until all the unsaved were saved.
  4. Over a period of time that spanned the turn into the 1900s, the various denominations in the U.S. began mostly trying to convert each other to the “right” church.  The average Christian was unprepared to deal with someone’s unbelief if that person were a Darwinist or a scientific atheist, but they were prepared to tell others why their church doctrine was right and the others were wrong.
  5.  As rational modernism gave way in popular thinking to the more relativistic post modernism, Christians became less sure that these doctrinal differences should make such a big difference, so we quit talking about them.  But then we weren’t quite sure what to talk about, since almost everyone we knew believed in Jesus . . . and so our words got softer and fuzzier.
  6. Now we are in a time when it is socially inappropriate to try to convince someone of anything.  It’s OK to tell people what you have experienced—share your story—but to try to persuade someone that they should change their story for any reason is considered highly arrogant.

So this is why we don’t have any real words anymore for . . . .

Even this nameless activity is being changed to just living out our story in front of people and hoping that somehow they connect the dots to know that Jesus loves them and died for them. Our time may be the time of the wordless Gospel. 

And if that sounds OK to you, then I wonder if you are OK with your children or your grandchildren never hearing the story of Jesus, never reading the Bible—just watching people do good things—because I’m afraid that we are virtually to that point.

Does faith still come by hearing the word of God? And how can they hear without a preacher? And do we still persuade others because we know the fear of the Lord?  And is the Holy Spirit still a guide to all truth—or just a Comforter?

We need some new words. More and more of our neighbors care less and less about Jesus.  If we are faithful to our calling, we have to go preach and teach as Jesus said in the Great Commission.  We don’t have to call it preaching and teaching if those words are somehow inappropriate . . . but we have to do it!

 

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Fridays With Isaiah: Isaiah 2 — Choose Your Mountain!

August 17, 2012 by Mark Woodward

I have been on many mountains in the world, and most are much more beautiful and majestic than the smallish Mt Zion where Jerusalem is today.  But fewer mountains have seen the drama this mountain has witnessed.

As with many ancient sites, which of the elevations is Zion is disputed—but it doesn’t matter. Abraham was there, as were Isaac and Jacob. David was there and the first temple was there. And Nebuchadnezzar and Herod and Jesus were there.  On Pentecost, Peter preached there and Paul was there and the Romans destroyed its buildings and made it a little taller with its own rubble.

God has history with this mountain!  So Isaiah uses it to prophecy about the future for God’s people.

Isaiah 2:1-5  “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD”

While a physical return to glory for the mountain of the Lord is a seductive and tempting understanding, if we went that route, I think we would be standing with the apostles near that mountain, saying, “Lord, and now will you restore the kingdom to Israel?”  And He would be again frustrated with my lack of understanding.

The mountain to which we should be and will be drawn is the mountain of the Lord, to His presence. Instead of worrying about the place, let’s focus on why people want to go there:  “He will teach us His ways, so that we may walk in his paths.”  Peace will reign because He will judge with righteousness.

This mountain of the Lord draws all nations!  It’s glory is the presence of the Lord—not its history, not its political significance, not its own majesty.

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord.”

Isaiah 2:6-22  “Stop trusting in man who has but a breath in his nostrils.”

While the future marches toward Zion and the beauty of worshipping His holiness there, the awful truth is that most people—even those who think they know all about God—are marching to a different tune and are running to mountains, but not to Zion.

They are fleeing to the rocks, hiding in holes, hoping caverns and caves will shelter them instead of Zion.  They fear judgment; they fear the Day of the Lord.  Why?  What have we done?

  • We are superstitious
  • We seek spiritual power from sources other than God
  • We trust in silver and gold—“there is no end to their treasures . . . .”
  • We trust in our own power to protect and defend ourselves—“no end to their chariots.”
  • We substitute other things for God in our lives.
  • We bow down to the work of our hands. ‘

I’m not a Hebrew scholar, but I just read that the word translated majesty when used for God is the same word but translated as pride when used for people.  This is a great lesson, i.e.,  that man’s pride is primarily his attempt to claim divine majesty.

A day of reckoning is coming!   Isaiah calls it the Day of the Lord and it’s a pretty frightening day if you have pretended to be God your whole life.  It will be one of those moments when all of those lies we tell ourselves will be exposed as self-deception. It will be a moment when the trinkets of false power—including fake spiritual power—will be “thrown away to the rats and bats (v. 20) as we run to hide from the truth.

God is rising to shake the earth!  The destruction of these quakes and tsunamis will make what we see on the news seem nothing because not only will the earth itself shake, but every mountain that we have built to compete with the mountain of the Lord will be shaken until it is just a pile of dust.

So choose a mountain!  Choose the mountain of the Lord, rush to it to learn to walk in the light of the Lord!   Or choose yourself a good hole in the ground to hide in, a cave that God cannot find, that’s so dark that God’s light can never penetrate it  . . . .

Wait a minute—everlasting darkness—that’s Hell, isn’t it?

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Fridays With Isaiah: Chapter 1 — The Leaves Faded On Bilbo’s Oak Tree!

August 10, 2012 by Mark Woodward

I personally am going to be spending time with Isaiah for a while. My interest is not driven by anything external, like teaching a class or even pursuing a particular question or theme; rather, I’m interested in just listening to the Word—just listening—and hearing what He says to me today.  Sharing with you will help me understand better what I’m hearing, so I hope you’ll look forward to Fridays.

Chapter 1: 1-4 – “I reared up children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me.”

I really love my kids. I loved them when they were little and bouncing on us in bed. I loved playing ball with the boys and going to Emily’s music events when they were teens—and I love them even more now as adults.  I can only think of one occasion in recent years when I thought I had really offended one of them, and I was appalled! I could not rest until I had gone and apologized—which proved to be unnecessary, but I didn’t care. I would have done anything in my power to restore what I perceived to be a tiny chink in our relationship.

What pain God our Father must feel who has given us life, reared us up, guarded us, fed us, and loved us in every conceivable way—what pain He must feel at his children’s rebellion, “children given to corruption” (v.4).  How much pain do the parents of these recent shooters feel?  Just the pain of the loss of your children would be horrible, but put on top of that the pain of their victims for whom every parent would feel responsible, and then to add a child’s resentment and rebellion toward you would be almost unbearable.  God’s pain did not start on the cross!

Chapter 1: 5-9 – “…only wounds and welts and open sores.”

Many speculate that any remains of Sodom and Gomorrah—the two ancient symbols of total depravity—lie at the bottom of the Dead Sea—death, death, and more death!  Isaiah appears to write to a remnant which has survived. I once read a fictionalized version of Jesus bringing Lazarus out of four days of rotting in his tomb, which conjectured about how nauseating his skin appeared and how frail he was as he recovered from death.  I doubt that is really what happened with Lazarus, but it might be the condition of this wounded and sore remnant in Israel.

Chapter 1:10-17 – “When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you.”

If Isaiah’s readers thought they were going to get off with just the threat of becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah, they were wrong. Isaiah begins the next section by addressing them as “you rulers of Sodom.”  Their worst nightmare was more than a dream! It was already reality!

And their religious rituals were MEANINGLESS!  Worse, they were offensive—“my soul hates . . . “—God will not hear their many, many prayers because they left their prayer shawls on the pew and went out the door and did more evil.

Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!  What part of these seven words do we have trouble understanding???

Chapter 1:18-20 —  “If you are willing and obedient.”

We used to sing an old hymn based on verse 18 “Though Your Sins Be As Scarlet.” We don’t sing or talk much about our sins any more—too bad, because it is hard to understand that you are made white as snow unless you know what scarlet and crimson mean!

Chapter 1: 21-28 – “Zion will be redeemed with justice.”

Your beautiful little baby girl . . . has become a harlot. She has no hope within herself of ever breaking out of her filthy life—but the LORD ALMIGHTY loves her—and me—enough to purge us of evil and redeem us with justice.  Purging may be painful, but so was justice!

Chapter 1: 29-31 – “like an oak with fading leaves”

These last verses of Chapter 1 are addressed to those who continue to rebel. Ultimately, they will be broken and perish (v.28), but even before that they will be ashamed and disgraced.

A beautiful oak tree is a splendid tree.  We were recently in New Zealand and visited Hobbiton, one of the outdoor sets for Lord of the Rings and the coming The Hobbit movies. Bilbo’s hobbit home sits under a beautiful oak tree, as described by J.R.R. Tolkien, so Peter Jackson, the director, had to produce a hobbit hole with a beautiful oak tree above it for verity in his films. Everything was perfect about this particular site in New Zealand except no oak tree! Fortunately, they found a beautiful oak tree about five miles away, so they cut it down, stripped its leaves, carefully dismembered it into hundreds of fragments, transported it all to the set, then reassembled the oak tree with nuts and bolts.

Of course the beautiful oak tree had no leaves—because it was dead, so 250,000 artificial oak leaves were shipped in from Japan and carefully attached to the tree—individually—to make the tree appear to be alive.

The beautiful oak tree of LOTR rotted, however, and the leaves faded in the decade between LOTR and The Hobbit, so that they were removed and replaced with an artificial trunk/branches and new leaves for the second film.

Those who rebel and resist the love and the purging of the LORD ALMIGHTY are like dead oak trees, which sometimes can be bolted together and life faked for a while, but eventually will rot and fade because they are dead.

The mighty man will become tinder and his work a spark; both will burn together with no one to quench the fire.

Isaiah, you frighten me! 

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What Is An “Uncle Wiggily” Gift?

August 9, 2012 by Mark Woodward

For Christmas, when I was about ten years old, my brother and sister, who were seven (twins) gave me an Uncle Wiggilyboard game.  They were so excited about giving it to me—and with every right because the game is for 7 year-olds!!  They played Uncle Wiggily all afternoon; they loved the gift they gave me!  For me, it was one of those gifts you have to pretend to be happy to receive.

That was Christmas fifty years ago, but not only do I remember the feelings of the day, but our family then and the next generation of kids in my own family know exactly what is meant when we say, “That’s an Uncle Wiggily gift!”

I recently received a very generous gift, but it was given with both spoken and unspoken conditions. The person (not my wife!) had every intention of being generous—and was—but lacked the gracious spirit that should accompany a gift.

I was still appreciative of the gift, but I thought to myself, there is more to being generous than just giving a gift, so I thought I’d share with you just a few thoughts about how to be a gracious giver, not just a generous giver.

Give happily!

People give gifts for many reasons:  obligation, coercion, habit, or social acceptability. It may sound strange to say, but I suspect that the people who give gifts because it makes them happy are among the best and most gracious. Sounds a bit selfish, doesn’t it. After all, my siblings were quite excited and happy about giving me Uncle Wiggily.  Well, it shouldn’t be the only characteristic for gracious giving, but if giving brings the giver no joy, the gift is diminished.

Give for the joy of the recipient!

If they had just given me a new baseball glove, I would have been ecstatic!  I will admit having to learn this part from my wife Sherrylee. I would have often bought gifts that I thought were great, if she hadn’t stopped me cold with the question: why would they want that?  An honest answer would have been, “because I really like it and they should too,” an answer which would have revealed how little I was thinking about the other person! A great gift should be great to both the giver and the receiver.

Give without conditions

A gift with strings may not even qualify as a gift! What do you think about people who give at church—as long as everything pleases them, but then use their “gifts” as leverage to make things happen the way they want it to happen. These gifts are more like purchases of influence!

What about people who give to create a debt of gratitude?  “Do you remember what I gave you? Now, I need something from you!”

Give with a smile, not a grimace!

I’m still learning a lot about generosity. Often Sherrylee is more generous than I am, so we give a gift that she gives with a big smile—and I give with a little smile. My smile has gotten bigger over the years as I watched her graciousness and the joy she brings to other people with her wonderful gifts.  Learning to be a more gracious giver is one of her gifts to me.

Give your gift wrapped appropriately!

It’s not that the wrapping—whether literal or metaphorical—changes the value of the gift, but it does tend to reflect the care and thought put into giving the gift.  The metaphorical wrappings for some gifts might be a special dinner, or a special moment, or simply accompanied by an expression of personal joy. Wrapping doesn’t have to be expensive to be especially appropriate.

“For God so loved the world that He gave . . . .”

 He didn’t have to! He gave only for the benefit of the recipients! He only required that the gift be received, not earned.  He gave out of pure love (while we were yet sinners), and He wrapped it in flesh and glory, so that we could recognize the glory that is ours.

Being a gracious giver begins with the realization that every good thing we have—even that which we think we have earned and own—every good thing is a gracious gift from a gracious God.

 

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More Than Hobbits In New Zealand!

August 3, 2012 by Mark Woodward

I spoke yesterday in chapel to about fifteen students at South Pacific Bible College in Tauranga, New Zealand.  These are students from all over the world who have committed at least two years of their lives to studying Bible and ministry from great teachers. Some even stay for a third year of practicum—not an academic year, but a year of guided practice in using the knowledge and skills they have received in the previous two years of classes.  I love that!

Sherrylee and I arrived in New Zealand after a not atypical day with international travel. At 8am, we left our hotel in Kuching, Malaysia, in order to arrive at the airport two hours before departure—only to find out that our flight had been cancelled—which is why you always arrive two hours early for international flights!

A very nice woman took our passports and information, disappeared into an office and came back in about twenty minutes with new tickets that required us to fly first to Kuala Limpur, then to Singapore, arriving about two hours before our long, overnight flight to Sydney. So no real damage to our plans, just an additional stop and more time in the air.

We boarded our flight from KL to Singapore right on time—then sat on the tarmac in a very hot airplane for over an hour because two passengers who had checked bags did not show—so their luggage had to be found and removed from the plane. I’m ok with good safety precautions, but it was going to really push us to make our connection in Singapore.

With less than an hour now after landing in Singapore, we had to clear immigration and customs, pick up our suitcases, change terminals, check-in at the British Airways counter to get board passes, check our luggage, clear passport control again to leave Singapore, and go through security.

But we made it, boarding our 747 for Sydney at 8pm, twelve hours after leaving our hotel in Kuching and with time even to get ready for our 7-hour overnight flight—you know, pick out movies to watch, get our books out, and hope for a little sleep.

The plane backed out of the gate—stopped—waited 10 minutes—then pulled back into the gate!   A cargo hold was overheating, so they were going to try to cool it down, but if they couldn’t, then . . . . Oh boy, here we go again! But after 45 minutes they got it cooled down, so we took off just about 90 minutes late. . . .

Which meant we missed our connection in Sydney, Australia! Now airlines are pretty good about booking you onto the next flight when you miss your connection, but because of the way we had booked our tickets, our names were not on the roster of those making connections, so we had again a short wait while they worked out our connection—all of this happening at 6am in the morning in Sydney—before coffee!

Finally around 11:30am, we boarded our Qantas Airways flight to Auckland, New Zealand, and arrived only about four hours later than originally scheduled—not a bad result for international travel any more.

Steve Raine, principal (president) of South Pacific Bible College and a very good friend, met us in Auckland and drove us two hours through the beautiful green countryside of New Zealand’s north island to Tauranga, which is our last stop on this Asian mission trip. Steve and his wife Gill have been guests in our home often, so we are thrilled to be able to spend some time in their home and get to know their work for God better.

After chapel at SPBC, Sherrylee and I joined the students on a special outing they were having, and what a pleasure it was. We spoke German with Lukas, who is here from Switzerland; we found common friends with Marcellus and his wife who are here from Santiago, Chile. Of course, the three or four students from Thailand all knew about RCC and Patinya, with whom LST has worked for many years. One girl from New Zealand told us her story of her parents being Christians, then leaving faith and divorcing, then at least her dad finding his way back to God. All of these students are here because they love God and want to be trained to serve Him better.  This college is a bright light in the South Pacific, but serves the kingdom of God all over the world!

The icing on the cake was to discover our friends Curt and Deborah Niccum here, who are just finishing a month of teaching at SPBC. Curt is a professor of Religion at Abilene Christian University and perhaps the best biblical language scholar in our fellowship. The students at SPBC are truly getting the best of our best!

Early Monday morning Sherrylee and I will leave New Zealand for home!! This is one of those crazy flights where we will fly 15 hours and arrive at DFW 20 minutes after departing—because of crossing the international dateline.

But getting home is always the best part of any journey! Hey, that sounds like there is a sermon in there somewhere, doesn’t it!

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God’s Drama In Asia!

August 1, 2012 by Mark Woodward

What an amazing world we live in! Because our flight from Kuching, Malaysia to Singapore is cancelled this morning, we are being re-routed through Kuala Limpur on a flight leaving in three hours. So while Sherrylee does some airport shopping for the grandkids, I’m sitting in a Coffee Bean shop, having a latte with a banana muffin while Carrie Underwood sings from the Grand Ole Opry on the TV monitor above me—in Kuching, Malaysia.

Next door to this little oasis of western culture is a shop selling prayer rugs and shawls for Muslim tourists, and in the restaurant at the other end of the departure area, advertisements announce a special menu for Ramadan. It’s about 90 degrees outside with 150% humidity, but beautiful purple wild orchids grow everywhere on the side of the road. The humidity we have in Houston, but not the orchids!

Last night’s dinner was a drama of mixed cultures: a seafood dinner served family style with peppered crab, whole shrimp, grilled whole fish, fern, and something my friend Dave Hogan (Singapore) called “worms” when he asked me to pass them.  And then we had a McDonald’s strawberry sundae for dessert. What an amazing world we live in!

Sherrylee and I attended the 51st Asia Mission Forum (AMF) in Kuching this year in order to visit with many of the Asian church leaders and missionaries to whom LST sends teams.  If you think the world is amazing, God’s church in this world is amazingly dramatic!

About two hundred people attended this AMF, one of the larger crowds, from about a dozen different countries.  On any row of seats, you would probably find a Christian couple from Singapore sitting next to their friends from Kuala Limpur and a family from the Philippines.  Japan had an especially large group this year; China was represented as was Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. Then there were the guests like us from the United States and a whole mob from Texas!

Joel Osborne, a former LST worker who now lives and works in Japan, was the director of the AMF and did an especially wonderful job balancing worship, teaching, fellowship, and inspiration.  Jim McGuiggin, the Irish saint of Churches of Christ who now lives near Nashville, brought deeply moving lessons each day. Joel led us in stirring worship—almost liturgical in its thoughtful structure and responsive readings—but the highlight for me were the personal testimonies of some of the Asian Christians.

Talk about drama, would you be surprised to know that one of the highest officials in the government in the Philippines is a devout Christian who hosts a congregation of saints in his home near Manilla?  And while he could have awed us with his own story, he spent most of his allotted time talking about his wife, who was rising in the judicial ranks as a judge in the Philippines, perhaps on a track to the Supreme Court, when she resigned! She resigned her position because of the corruption and abuse of power in the ranks of her fellow judges—but she didn’t resign out of fear! No, she resigned to fight! She wrote two books documenting the corruption and abuse of power and has become a national figure in the fight against corruption.  The two of them are powerful Christian voices for the revival of integrity in a country that has a long Christian tradition.

Then last night three young Japanese Christians, struggling to control their emotions, told about how the disastrous earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011 had affected them. These three young Christians, alone with Joel Osborne, directed much of the Japanese disaster relief done by Churches of Christ, including collection and distribution of food and clothing and relief items, in addition to the clean-up and recovery work that continues.

Pausing with every sentence, the young woman told how she went to the disaster area in faith but how the questions of God’s absence in the midst of all the destruction and suffering actually caused her to decide there could not be a God who would allow such! She abandoned her faith–but stayed with her work for the disaster victims. What she discovered was that giving up on God brought no more answers and no relief to her pain. Then her Christian friends reminded her of Christ’s suffering, even his feeling abandoned on the cross, and God found her soft heart and moved back in to recover and heal her—as she continues to help others heal.

The exotic plants, the food, the culture—these are all interesting—but the people and their stories, this is where we see God’s drama being unpacked in our lives. God’s story has life, death, joy and sorrow, beauty and beasts—but God’s drama is the real world—the most amazing one of all!

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It’s Winter In Australia, But Very Warm!

July 29, 2012 by Mark Woodward

Sherrylee and I were invited to participate in the first South Pacific Conference on Missions, organized on behalf of the churches in the Restoration Movement in Australia and New Zealand.  It wasn’t a large gathering, perhaps 50-60 different people by the end, but what a wonderful group of people!

A good percentage of the participants represented the independent Christian church workers, perhaps an equal number from the Churches of Christ (non-instrumental), and then several from the remnant from the International Church of Christ movement in Australia. Although a number of these representatives knew each other either by name or from hearing about their work, quite a few new relationships were formed among the participants and much was learned about the work going on in these different streams.

If that was all that happened in this short three-day conference, it would have been worthwhile, but, in fact, much more took place.

On Thursday, Sherrylee and I were responsible for the whole day’s pre-conference workshop. In the morning, we brought our LST experience with knowing yourself better so that you know how you will work within groups to the table. By the time we broke for a late lunch, people were talking about what it meant to their work since they were a “Mission Impossible” or a “Cautious Lover”.

For the afternoon the coordinator Peter Gray had asked us to talk about leadership training in the churches, but considering the audience of leaders in the room, we decided to start with the axiom that you will not be able to train good leaders until you are a good leader, so we presented our work on “1A Leadership” which we have practiced for years with LST—you know, the leadership style based on the “one another” passages in the New Testament.

Once again, it became very apparent to me how often leaders mistakenly think that somehow their position exempts them from those very clear “one another” passages.

Sherrylee taught the women on Friday about women in ministry, and Saturday morning I shared with the group the characteristics of great missional churches (If you are interested, you can find the core material for these in my blog categories!).

But we were inspired by the tremendous work done by some of the people in the room. One brother is deeply committed to working with the aboriginal people in Australia. Another has a terrific ministry through music with juveniles who live on the streets.  Another brother has led a church planting ministry in New Zealand for 12 years, and then there is Phil, 70 years old perhaps, who has preached all over the world, conducting weeks of tent revivals, but who unselfishly brought a young preacher from India to the conference to introduce him to the church leaders there.

It’s winter in Australia; the temperatures were in the 50s and 60s—a wonderful change from our Texas heat—but the love and warmth in this conference were unmistakably a sign of growing unity and cooperation among these Christians.

They will know we are Christians by our love! Kudos to the Aussie and Kiwi Christians for bravely stepping out in faith and love.

Yesterday we arrived in Kuching, Malaysia, for the Asia Mission Forum, where we expect to find the same Spirit.

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