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Posts Tagged ‘evangelism’

God Is Behind Immigration!

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2010| 1 Comment »

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have heard someone say the equivalent of, “Don’t we have enough to do at home? Why do we need to go overseas? Shouldn’t we take care of our neighborhood first?”

When Sherrylee and I were newly married and committed to going to Germany with our newly-formed mission team, I asked a very prominent preacher whom I knew for help raising support. Without thinking about what the implications were, he said, “Man, if only you weren’t going overseas!” I mistakenly took this as criticism back then, but I know now that what he really was saying was that American Christians prefer to support local over foreign outreach.  Bad decision!

Remember how God allowed persecution on the earliest church in Jerusalem and “scattered” people, forcing them into other countries, even to the Gentiles (Acts 8:1,4,19-20). I don’t think He used the same technique with American Christians—although WWII was the real beginning (not the earliest) of foreign outreach in churches of Christ—but I do believe that He has worked in time and space in our day to wipe away our tepid excuses for not sharing the Good News with people different from us.

Look at this snippet from Wikipedia about U.S. Immigration:

As of 2006, the United States accepts more legal immigrants as permanent residents than all other countries in the world combined. Since the liberalization of immigration policy in 1965, the number of first-generation immigrants living in the United States has quadrupled, from 9.6 million in 1970 to about 38 million in 2007. 1,046,539 persons were naturalized as U.S. citizens in 2008.

If Christians hesitate to “go into all the world,” then why shouldn’t God bring all the world into our neighborhood?  It’s not punishment—it’s who we are and what we are about!!

Let’s Start Talking is best known probably for its short-term, overseas mission programs, but as early as 1990, LST was also training Americans to reach out to international students, immigrants, and non-English speakers in our universities and neighborhoods.  FriendSpeak is LST’s program for training churches to reach out cross-culturally in their own communities—and it is huge!

Rather than tell you about it, I want to give you a link to the Christian Chronicle which just ran an online article and asked for feedback from those who might have used FriendSpeak in their churches. Just click this link and you will see firsthand what can be done here at home for the whole world:

http://www.christianchronicle.org/blog/2010/08/reader-feedback-tell-us-about-your-friendspeak-experience/

Local versus Foreign—not even a legitimate argument anymore—if it ever was. There is only, “Who can I talk to today—and who can I talk to tomorrow—and who will talk with those people over there?  Sure, I will.”

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Obscure Tips for New Missionaries–and Old!

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on August 4, 2010| 5 Comments »

Remember the young missionary couple that Sherrylee and I visited with Sunday evening. In the previous post (http://wp.me/pO3kT-5S), I shared with you some of the insights that I had during our conversation. But, I also promised to share with you the advice we offered that seemed to resonate with them.  Maybe it will for you as well.

  • Treat your team relationships like a marriage. Working on the mission field in a team is much more common than it used to be—and rightly so. However, most teams break up pretty quickly. The reasons for that are numerous—and worthy of its own post—so let me just skip to the conclusion: if you want your team to stay together, then you have to commit to one another like a marriage. If you believe divorce is an option, then you will likely divorce each other. If you do not believe divorce is an option, then you will struggle, but you will prayerfully find ways to make it work because it brings God more glory!
  • Don’t try to be more German than the Germans. When we went to Germany in 1971, I was pretty much prepared to wear lederhosen, eat brotchen for breakfast, and listen to polka music every day for the rest of my life. I knew all about fitting into the local culture. I’m so thankful for the German Christian who told us, “Don’t be more German than the Germans. I eat cereal for breakfast and would not be caught dead in lederhosen!”  Foreigners who over-identify with another culture are still foreigners—and often look pretty silly to the nationals.
  • Don’t pretend you are not an American! The very best missionaries that I know learned how to use their foreignness—their American-ness, if you will—in an attractive way in their new culture. To do this, however, you need a good local friend to help you know what is truly attractive and what is just being an ugly American.
  • Don’t wait too long to come home for your first visit. Our specific piece of advice was to come home for your first visits before you are so homesick that it skews your view of both of your homes. If you wait too long before you come home, then everything about America is too wonderful and everything about your new foreign home is where you were so unhappy! Both of those mistaken views can be avoided by not waiting so long to come home.
  • Read the Roman Catholic Catechism. This couple is going to a predominantly Catholic country, so it would seem obvious that they would want to know about the country’s religion. Surprisingly, many prospective missionaries assume that they will only be telling their own story, not listening to other people’s story.  Reading the primary source (Quran would be another example) is a way not only to learn, but to show respect for your new hosts.

And I just want to emphasize the value of going to the primary sources. Reading books about other religions always has a sub-plot—another agenda—so you can’t really know that you are getting the real story from them. The same is true even when teachers and mentors “explain” other religions to us. I have often cringed when listening to some self-appointed spokesperson explaining to the media or to a public class what my church believes. I’m sure people in other countries do the same.

  • Don’t believe everything that Americans tell you about your new country. I was once in a European restaurant with an LST team. As I would do at home, I put my napkin in my lap, but one of the LST workers who had been there for a couple of weeks already stopped me and said, “Don’t do that! That’s not polite here.”  I took it back out of my lap, but I then looked around the restaurant and noticed that everyone else in the restaurant had their napkin in their lap!  I turned and asked my friend where they had heard this information, and she said, “The American missionary told us!”  Since then, I have had lots of experiences with American myths about host countries, i.e., one American tells another American who tells another American. . . and either it was not true to begin with or it became unrecognizably altered in the multiple transmissions. 

I forgot to mention this last piece of advice to the young couple, but it is a short piece of advice that Maurice Hall gave to us back in the 70’s when Sherrylee and I were the young couple, new to the mission field, and asking for advice. Maurice was an early missionary in France after WW II and one of the last missionaries out of Viet Nam as Saigon was falling. He continues today, beyond his 90th birthday, to practice this advice. He said to me, “Mark, don’t quit!” That’s all, but I have found it to be extraordinarily valuable. I have shared that with many, many prospective and experienced missionaries around the world.

Let me end by sharing it with you: “Don’t quit!”

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Are Your Missionaries Prepared and Micro-Managed?

Posted in Christian Missions, Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on August 2, 2010| 1 Comment »

Yesterday evening, we had the delightful experience of having a young couple for supper who are headed to South America in a few months as part of a new mission team.  They have received excellent training and mentoring, and they seem to have good churches behind them now, so it was a wonderful evening.

This couple did come, however, to visit with Sherrylee and me because God’s plan for us has included a lot of mission experience, not only our full-time experience in Germany and our short-term experiences with Let’s Start Talking, but also the many, many points of contact all over the world with mission sites and missionaries that we have experienced and observed over the last 40+ years.

But before I share with you some insights that Sherrylee and I offered them, let me tell you a couple of things that I learned from the conversation!

  • New missionaries today have myriad sources and resources for preparation and training. In the last couple of years, this couple and their teammates had been through extensive testing, counseling, cross-cultural training, discipling, and mentoring by people who are both experienced and educated (which are not always the same thing!).  They had gone to their prospective site and done on site research prior to their commitment to that site.  Churches sending new missionaries would be foolish not to require such preparation prior to departure.
  • American churches still believe they can micro-manage mission work in foreign countries, using financial models, success models, evangelistic strategies, and administrative models that they apply to their American church staff—maybe.  Even this young couple had stories to tell of ridiculous requirements imposed on them or their teammates by potential sponsoring churches.  (I’ll get specific about this in a later posting!) Maybe it is because new missionaries are often young, or maybe it is simply the American business model for God’s work, but my advice to all prospective missionaries is to simply bless and release any church that is trying to micro-manage your work. No amount of support is worth the grief that you will experience if unequally yoked to this kind of partner.
  • Both the young man and woman decided to do foreign mission work because of a short-term mission experience. The woman worked six weeks in Europe and the young man did an internship in Brazil. The direction of both lives was radically re-directed because of these experiences. Let me say this as clearly as I can: In my experience, virtually NO ONE enters the mission field without having a successful short-term experience first! Doesn’t it become obvious that to send more long-term workers, we must first send more short-term workers!

In the following post, I’ll continue with the advice that seemed most valuable to these new missionaries.

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Who Wants To Know What I Want To Say?

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 24, 2010| 1 Comment »

The problem for most short-term workers is not a lack of desire to tell the story of their mission project; rather, it is finding appropriate opportunities to talk to people who really want to hear.  Let’s Start Talking prepares its workers with a twenty-second answer for most people—which is the average attention span for informal mission reports to friends and acquaintances.

The next place everyone thinks about reporting is from the pulpit of your home congregation, where the most people can be addressed—but, unfortunately, pulpit time is as rare as sunshine in Seattle, so let’s spend a few moments listing very appropriate venues where you will find people who want to hear about your work.

  • Church elders/leaders meetings. You will have to ask for this time, but it is worth it. And you may only get five minutes, but it is worth it! Use it to inspire them—to expand their view of the kingdom and to encourage missions. You might change the whole agenda of your home church with such a meeting.
  • Mission committee/leaders. Ask for five minutes and see what you get! Express your gratitude and show them that their investment in you (hopefully) produced glory for God! When you leave, your goal is for them to say, “That was great! Who can we send next?”
  • Adult classes. Build your report into an inspirational lesson. Use Bible texts that have motivated you. Don’t preach; rather, leave the class inspired with a heart for God’s mission!
  • Teen classes.  They never look like they are paying attention, but if you can tell stories about the people you encountered, you are planting seeds for service in virgin soil.
  • Children’s classes. Use a map, show a picture of other children, excite their sense of adventure—which will morph into wanting to do something BIG for God someday.
  • Small groups—I know these are often social, sometimes activity oriented, but what better place to dialogue with people. Leave plenty of time for their questions and interaction.  Tell them that they can do it too.
  • Special groups: Ladies classes, campus ministry devotionals, 39ers nights, etc.
  • Display boards/tables at church.  These will often tell your story for months to people you will never get to talk with personally. Leave some way for people to contact you for more information.
  • Written reports: blogs, newsletters, just plain letters—but use lots of pictures and choose your words carefully. People do not read long stuff anymore.
  • Facebook. Let all your friends know. Label your pictures in a purposeful way rather than just trying to be funny. Include links to fan sites like LST (http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Lets-Start-Talking/293788299554?ref=ts) where people can learn how to be involved themselves.
  • Others: small town newspapers, Kiwanis clubs, other churches

And don’t forget, your window of opportunity is probably only open about 6-8 weeks. After that, it will become increasingly difficult to get onto any platform because the experiences themselves are so distant.

What would you add to this list?

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Don’t Forget To DO This In Your Report!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on July 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I hate to start with negatives like I did in the last post about the “don’ts” of reporting on short-term missions, but the bad things we do are so easily recognizable in others, and the bad examples provide great contrast for the positive ones.

Here is a short list of positive things to do with reporting that will win friends for missions and glorify God.

  • Do ask to report! You might think that church leaders and/or others might be excited about hearing your report, but, more often, they have their own agenda and have checked you off when they wrote you the check. You need to be proactive and ask for the opportunity to report at as many venues as you can.
  • Do make your trip real for people. Seems obvious, but many short-termers are surprised that after only two weeks, people at home have forgotten where they were going and what they were doing.  You were not on their radar much while you were gone—accept it and fill the information gap when you report.
  • Do talk about the people you served. One good, concrete story about a person you care about is worth a thousand slides of groups or church buildings! Just a sentence or two that touches hearts in your audience may change somebody’s life!  I have often told the story of the woman who wondered if she would ever read the most important book ever written. After reading Luke’s story of Jesus, she told her LST worker: “Now I know I have read the most important book ever written!”
  • Do expand people’s vision of the Kingdom of God. Before the first service of a new church in Moscow in 1991, the very new Christians asked if they could video the communion service itself so they would know how to do it after we left. . . . I still am moved by the purity of their young faith and this very simple need. Such stories remind us that the Kingdom of God is much greater than what we may experience every Sunday in our buildings. Share Kingdom stories and you will bless your audience.
  • Do encourage those listening to find their own mission. Be careful about making it sound like theirs should look just like yours, but you have a message that they will listen to because you have done it!  If you can do, they can do it! One of LST’s college workers always shared her story with the fourth grade girls that she taught in Sunday school. It should not have surprised us when nine or ten years later, some of those same girls started going with LST because of the seeds planted in Sunday school by their enthusiastic teacher-missionary many years earlier.
  • Do show public gratitude for prayers and support. One simply can never show enough gratitude to the people who send you.
  • Give glory to God. Do this explicitly with your words, do this with your pictures, do this with your illustrations, and do this with your blog. Do this with your body language, do this with the smile on your face and the gleam in your eye. Talk about God’s work, not about yours!

I personally regret that reporting about missions has such a bad reputation, so much so that it is fairly difficult to access the biggest platforms at our churches any more. In the next posting, I’m going to share with you some of the best venues and how to get permission to report there. 

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Don’t Report on Your Mission Trip Like This!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on July 19, 2010| 4 Comments »

Do you remember when the missionaries always reported to the church with their slide shows in place of the sermon on Sunday night?   (I know, some of you don’t even remember Sunday night services) Especially during the summer months when many missionaries were on furlough, it seems like we might have at least one report each month and sometimes more often! Perhaps that is why we don’t do it anymore—(I mean the missionary slide show report, not Sunday night—other reasons for that!).

As I look back on the reports as I remember them, they were always VERY long, LOTS of buildings and large group shots, and TOO MANY stories to remember. For that reason, part of the training for re-entry that Let’s Start Talking does with all of its workers is on how to report on their short-term mission project effectively.  First, I’m going to write about the DON’TS and get the negative stuff out of the way.

  • Don’t forget to report! It is an opportunity to share the blessing you have received. It is an act of gratitude to those who sent you and prayed for you.
  • Don’t talk about the weather, the food, or the housing. The audience did not experience it and they really don’t care as much about it as you did while you were there.
  • Don’t talk about the problems that you encountered. Every mission project has problems, but if you survived to talk about it, it wasn’t that big! You run the risk of making parents afraid to send their kids or elders afraid to send their members on future short-term missions because “they might have bad experiences like that last team did!”
  • Don’t tell all the horror stories about the foreign culture, i.e., the gross things you ate or the immorality of the people you worked with.  That’s why you went. Will those stories make others want to do missions? Do they give glory to God?
  • Don’t criticize the mission church, its leaders, or the missionary. That’s the last thing any church needs is some American Christian—young or old—to come in and become an expert on both their work and their context in a week or two. “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” especially when judging someone else’s work. If your church and your preacher are perfect, then you can cast the first stone—unless you yourself are less than perfect!
  • Don’t leave the impression that you went on a church-sponsored vacation! Of course you took lots of pictures during your free time, probably more than during the work itself, so if you show all your pictures, you will unquestionably leave the impression that most of what you did was play and a smaller portion was actually what the church sent you to do.  LST tells its workers to NEVER show free time pictures in reports and NEVER talk about free time. They are not really pertinent to why you were sent, so why include them in your report?
  • Don’t post people’s names or pictures on the internet in your blog or website or anywhere without having asked their permission. In some countries, people could go to prison, while in other countries, it might only be an embarrassment to them. Even in a wide-open country like Germany, LST had one of our workers who read with an Iranian refugee, who was sneaking away from the hard-core, militant Muslims that he lived with in order to read the story of Jesus with her.  What might have happened to him, if his group found his name on an LST report website??
  • Don’t talk too long. LST tells workers to prepare a twenty-second answer for the question: how was your trip? Anything more and people’s eyes start to glaze over. Stick to five-minute reports for the elders and mission committee, 15-20 minutes for classes, but for your own family, you can expand to 25minutes—but just once.
  • Don’t make yourself the hero! Don’t talk about the negative that happened—all of the problems and challenges are included– because it makes you look like a suffering martyr—which very few of us are!
  • Don’t talk about how much good it did you! Now this is tricky because almost everyone comes home feeling the change in themselves because of a rich, mission experience, BUT what you have to remember is that you went to help OTHER people. Your church sent you to teach OTHER people.  What they want to hear is that OTHER PEOPLE were helped.  I don’t mean to say this to negate your own experience, but it is not one that you need to talk about a lot—that’s all.

I wish I could tell you that I have never done any of these reporting sins, but, in fact, I have done all of them at some time.  Anyone else have stories to tell?

NEXT:  So what should you do to report well?

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“How To Make Jesus Smile” Luke 10:17-23

Posted in Christian Missions, Luke 10 Series, tagged , , , , , on July 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

17The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.” 18He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”  21At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

What a day of celebration when the seventy-two all returned!! Of course they returned with joy! What could be more joyful than to report the power they had seen displayed. They had survived! They had overcome the obstacles. The lambs had won! The wolves were cowering in their caves!

They had healed the sick, even those possessed by demons. They had exorcised the angels of darkness like none before them. They were amazed at what they had done—yes, at what they had done.

If they had had an LST EndMeeting before reporting to Jesus, we would have told them not to talk about themselves when they are reporting to the folks back home, but to talk about the people they had served. Jesus uses a  more sublime approach to re-setting their perspective, but tries to teach them the same lesson.

He does not rebuke them for their naïve, but not quite innocent enthusiasm for their own accomplishments. Instead he shares with them a bigger vision of what has happened. He says, yes, you experienced some of the joy of winning the little battle in the small corners where you were sent, but let me tell you that I can see what you have done as part of the total defeat of the Prince of Darkness. I see that what you have done has affected even the invisible world where spiritual warfare rages—and what you have done is part of the complete annihilation of the Enemy.

Yes, you should be happy; yes, celebrate . . . but maybe not so much over what YOU have done because what you accomplished is all by the authority that I gave you.  Instead, why don’t you just celebrate God’s victory!

I have a friend who is a football coach for a highly successful high school football team. When I was telling him my thoughts on this passage, he went into coach mode and immediately started repeating the things he and his staff drill into their footballers: “There is no I in Team,” “don’t celebrate yourself, just be glad you are on the team.” His words sounded very much like the words of Jesus to me.

The next words are very sweet. Jesus, the man of sorrows, the lamb slain before the foundation of the world, led silently to the slaughter, is rarely shown in celebration, but here He is “full of joy through the Holy Spirit.”  If the disciples were sensitive to Jesus, then they were happier than they had even been moments before. If they were His disciples and not out for themselves, then they were even more pleased that He was full of joy.

They had accomplished their tasks, they had learned to depend on God, they had faced both reception and rejection, and they had learned the power in the Name of Jesus. But the final lesson they learned is that when they submit their wills to His, when they go and heal and speak, then they make Jesus very happy!

I want to be one of those persons who fills Jesus with joy; I want to make Him smile.

Question:  What could you do that would contribute to the Victory and make Jesus smile?

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“What If They Don’t Like Us?” Luke 10:5-16

Posted in Luke 10 Series, tagged , , , , , , on July 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

How do we act when we get there? What do we do?  What if they don’t like us? Sounds like questions we would get from LST teams in training. In this third part of our look at Luke 10, Jesus addresses these very questions for the Seventy-Two.

Part of the experience for these disciples was to be taken into the houses of strangers and discern whether they were friends or foes. Showing hospitality to travelers was part of their culture; hospitality was rarely denied, but was not necessarily given cheerfully. These workers were warned of cold receptions, but, strangely enough, not given permission to move around until they found a warmer reception.

No, they were told to “stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you.” It was not about their comfort or their full stomachs, and there was no mention of fulfilling their strategic purpose. It was an opportunity to prepare this house to receive the peace of God. If they moved from house to house to make themselves more comfortable or to get better meals, their motivation would appear to be less than singly  focused on preparing for Jesus to come.

Upon arrival in the town where they were sent, the disciples were given an apparently impossible task and a simple message to proclaim: “Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’”  Jesus’ first instructions were to prepare them for rejection.

What town in its right mind would reject a healing ministry, where the lame walk and the blind see? Christians are eager to go healing and feeding and building and restoring—all part of the plan to prepare for the coming of Jesus—but Jesus warned them of rejection they would receive, not because they were healing, but because they had a message to deliver alongside their healing ministry. If they had only healed, they would have not completed the task Jesus gave them; if they only preached, the same would be true. The warning about rejection makes it certain that Jesus assumed their healings would be followed by proclamation.

In fact, when they were rejected and after they dusted their feet of the sand of that town, even then they were to repeat the message! They were to be bold with their message, delivering it where it was received and where it would be rejected. Receptivity may have been an issue for deciding duration of the visit, but not the reason for the visit. The disciples were to go into the town because Jesus was getting ready to come, regardless of the receptivity.

Jesus affirms his participation in the process in verse 16, assuring the disciples that when they are heard, He is heard; when they are rejected. He is rejected. To give them even more fortitude, He draws God of Hosts into the covenant and says that those who reject Jesus are without God. No wonder the curses on Bethsaida, Korazim, and Capernaum sound so harsh too us—and perhaps even to the disciples then. Jesus was teaching them that the consequences of rejecting Jesus are terrible and frightening.  Those who go out must get the message to all who will hear, for the consequences of not listening are terrible.

Next: Mostly Jesus is pictured as the “man of sorrows,” but what story shows him with a great big smile?

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Don’t take your purse and don’t talk to anyone!

Posted in Bible Study, Christian Missions, Luke 10 Series, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2010| 5 Comments »

In the first post on Luke 10, we talked about the motivational instructions from Jesus to the seventy-two disciples, He was sending out ahead of him.  Following that in verse 4, he gives them very unusual logistical instructions—but why?

“Do not take a purse or bag or sandals,” but why not? Do not provide for yourself, but let God provide. The lesson in faith that you will experience is much greater than the discomfort you feel in the first insecure steps. Many adults who go with Let’s Start Talking are in a financial position where they can  write a check to cover all of their fund-raising obligations; however, it has long been our practice to discourage this, but rather to encourage them to send out letters to churches, family, and friends, just like our students who don’t own anything but their T-shirts.

Just recently, a couple in their forties, not wealthy but comfortable, intended to pay for their own trip, but finally agreed to follow our advice.  They raised all of their funds and more from friends who wanted to support them in their short-term mission effort. The couple came to us and thanked us for “forcing” them to do this, saying that what they experienced and learned about faith and generosity was already a big enough blessing if they got nothing else from their mission experience. Christians going out in their own strength are Christians who are departing powerless.

“And do not greet anyone on the road.” Perhaps Jesus was worried about distraction. It is really easy for workers going out to stop and chat with friends or those who are nearer or those who are easily addressed. After all, isn’t this person’s soul of equal value with those who are never confronted because we never arrive?

I’m quite sure Jesus would have conceded the equal value of the souls, but He would have asked us, “but didn’t I send you to . . . ? What about those people?  What distracted you? What kept you from arriving? The distraction may have seemed like something good—and maybe it was, but it was not what I sent YOU to do! That person was the task of another disciple . . . . ”

Jesus had just lost three potential disciples who refused to pay the price to follow Jesus without distraction (Luke 9:57-62). The one needed predictability to be secure; the next could not leave his parents in the hands of God; and the third had too many family responsibilities to think about Jesus. But they all were willing later . . . after they took care of these major distractions. “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”  (Luke 9:62) Not even greeting someone on the road is enough reason to suspend your focus on accomplishing His task.

Next: In the next verses, Jesus tells them how to work and what they will experience.  Sometimes a flashforward can be very discouraging. Was this a strategy for preparing disciples that we should imitate?

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The Making of Great Disciples: Luke 10 – “Ask and Go”

Posted in Bible Study, Christian Missions, Luke 10 Series, tagged , , , on July 7, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve always intended to write about the Word, but mostly I have been pretty topical. Today, I want to start a short series on one of the greatest chapters in the New Testament on being a disciple.  I hope you will enjoy sharing the journey with me into the Word!

From the beginning of His ministry, when Jesus refused to be a lecturing professor, he chose experiences over theories as the best way for his followers to learn what is true. Come-and-see discoveries turned fishermen into disciples, turned cowards into martyrs, and turned doubters into preachers of righteousness.  This description of Jesus sending out a group of seventy-two followers to prepare His way is the story of what He taught them, not what they taught others.

His opening instructions contained one of those paradoxes that Jesus often used to confound, then enlighten His disciples. He first sends them out two by two and then tells them that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. If the latter describes accurately the conditions into which he was sending them, then why did he not send them out one by one and cover twice as much ground?  Did Jesus miss the lesson on “efficiencies”? Or was he teaching his disciples the importance of partnerships, relationships, and the necessity of shared experiences? This must be a reflection of Jesus’ teaching that where two or three are together in His name, that He is there with them. What power there is when two are going out, not only in the name of Jesus, but accompanied by Jesus!

Then He sent them out with a prayer on their lips, not for themselves, but for God to send out Workers into the harvest!  I have read this passage and preached it for years, heard it even more at every mission event ever held, yet never realized that Jesus’ intent was for those disciples standing in front of him to be the answer to the prayer! His first sentence is the command to “Ask” and his next sentence is the command to “Go!”  How often is it that we may be the answer to our own prayers, that God has put a burden on our hearts for some part of his world or some way of showing kindness. We pray, asking God to provide . . . when he has already provided through those of us praying.

And He doesn’t just send us to the protected and safe places in life; no, this first time out He sends them like “lambs among wolves!” But surely part of their confidence in going was that were going out two by two, they were going as an answer to prayer for Workers in the harvest, and they were going sent by Jesus himself.

Next:  Don’t take anything with you and don’t greet anyone on the road–strange commands for Jesus’ disciples! What was He thinking?

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