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Posts Tagged ‘Great Commission’

African Questions: What About the Poor?

Posted in Christian Missions, tagged , , , , , on February 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

Introduction

About a year and a half ago, Sherrylee and I were in Africa for Let’s Start Talking. We were visiting either sites where we regularly send LST teams or new sites that had requested teams, but with whom we had had no personal contact.  It is impossible to tell if a new site is appropriate and/or prepared for LST teams without these personal contacts, so site visits are a regular part of our life.

Though it may sound paradoxical to those only vaguely familiar with missions, Let’s Start Talking has not had much history in Africa.  Two factors have contributed to this: first, LST is an urban ministry and most of the mission work done in Africa by churches of Christ is rural.

The second reason is that most of the missions done by churches of Christ has been in the English-speaking part of Africa, which limits the attraction of LST’s offer to help people with their English—at least, that’s what we thought.

A third reason that probably lies far behind the other two is that much of Africa is already Christian—at least superficially. LST works better where people come who have either little exposure to Christianity (Thailand or China) or they have had so much that they are apathetic toward the Christian message (western Europe).

However, we have tried to be open to where the Lord knows we should go, so when many invitations come from African national evangelists, we visit to see if we are called to work with them.  In the last five or six years, therefore, we have developed some deep relationships with certain national churches in Africa.

However, working in Africa brings a whole new set of questions and experiences for us personally and for LST. I shared some of this on Facebook notes before I started blogging, but I’ve been thinking more about these questions and wanted to share them with you.

 

My First Question About Missions in Africa

In the Gambia, we were told that it cost about $300/year to send a child to school. Many children don’t go to school because their parents do not have that kind of money. We met the same situation in Kenya.

Also the drought/famine in Kenya was heartbreaking. African ministers told about people in their communities who had nothing to feed their children, so they abandon them rather than watching them die.

Almost every day, we were confronted with some situation in which we felt like we should just pull out our wallet and fix somebody’s life–at a rather nominal cost to us personally.

We visited with Larry and Hollye Conway who are part of the “Made In The Street” ministry in Nairobi–a fantastic work btw. They have worked in Africa for about 25 years now. Sherrylee asked Hollye what the hardest part of her work was, and she said it was knowing when to give in love and when to withhold in love.

Jesus did not feed every crowd, raise every person who died, heal every sick person–but sometimes he did. I wonder how he made his choices.  Jesus is the one who said, “The poor you have with you always,” justifying the use of funds for something that seemed frivolous to others in the group.  But I always feel guilty if I am even tempted to quote that verse in any context!!

My experience is that it is often inappropriate for Americans to just walk in and start throwing money at every need they see, whether they are individual, institutional, or social.  But I can’t imagine that ignoring needs in the name of any philosophy of missions is right.

So that’s my question! How can we help the poor and needy, and how do we balance meeting their physical needs with meeting their spiritual needs.

I don’t know the answer, but I do know that it is not either one or the other! Feeding them, housing them, and healing them does not change eternity for them. But not feeding them, housing them, or healing them may change eternity for us.

What are your answers?

 

 

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Stories of Wine and Romance!

Posted in Short-Term Missions, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 15, 2011| 1 Comment »

I promised to tell some of the stories behind the LST Expectations and Commitments, formerly known as the Guidelines.

First, I want to say that almost all of the stories come from the 1980s when Let’s Start Talking was just beginning, and we were learning how to do short-term missions in a very new way!

Secondly, all of these stories revolve around people who were 19 or 20 years old and have since become very mature, responsible people.  These early stories should not reflect on them anymore than they do on Sherrylee and me and Let’s Start Talking now.

Too Much Wine

At the same time when most of the home churches of our students still preached and proscribed total abstinence from all alcoholic drinks,  Western European Christians virtually all drank beer frequently and had an occasional glass of wine.

Almost without exception our first workers were offered beer and/or wine during those early LST projects by their hosts!  One of our young women who had never even tasted wine before saw a glass poured for her at her host’s dinner table one special evening. Panicking a little, she decided that she would just down that one glass quickly and get rid of the problem. Of course, her host immediately poured another glass, which the student chugged as well!  She really doesn’t remember much of the rest of the evening.

After hearing this story, we decided it was just better to insist on abstinence, thus Expectation #7 – Protect the integrity of your testimony!

Too Much Romance

It was the very day their team was leaving for Germany on an early LST project.  They had been dating for some time at college and had come to a critical point in their relationship.  He was ready to ask her to marry him. She was trying to figure out how to break up with him!

As it sometimes happens, she found exactly the right moment to break up with him just before they boarded the plane for their six-week LST project together!  He cries for the entire flight, while she talks to a young Air Force officer that she just happened to be seated next to.

After this team had been on the field for about a week, Sherrylee and I get an emergency phone call! Come to Hildesheim! The entire team is engulfed in civil war, with the guys on His side and the girls on Her side!

Sherrylee and I drove up from Mannheim, met with the team, laid His and Her’s relationship out in the open and tried to bring some peace and harmony to the team. By the end of a very long evening, everyone is crying, everyone is hugging, so sorry for the trouble that has been caused. Everyone is going to do what is right. He is going to be stronger!

We leave, but before the second week is over, we get another emergency phone call from the team! It’s not working! He can’t eat; he can’t sleep; he is so heart-broken that sometimes he can’t even get through a conversation with His readers. She on the other hand is just having a great time—which makes Her team members mad who now almost all feel sorry for Him.

We drive up there and offer Him a little break—a few days away from the team so he can pull Himself back together!  He accepts, and we make the arrangements for Him and take Him to a friend’s home for a few days.

In the meantime, we learn that it makes all the guys mad that He is “punished” by being taken away from the team, when She is the problem!

Anyway, after just 24 hours, He calls us and says he feels so much better and has rejoined the team. Thanks for having given Him such good advice and support!”  So, we think, maybe they will hold together until the end of the project, which is now just three weeks away.

Three or four days later, we get the call and NOTHING is working right, so we drive back up to Hildesheim, move Him off of that team permanently, and place Him with another team about four hundred kilometers away.  It’s not ideal, but it is the best we can come up with.

The Hildesheim team seems to improve with some of the tension relieved. We visit the young man on His new team, who, in general, is better as well—especially since one of girls on the new team has started paying Him special attention!!

Well, two weeks later, all of our LST teams meet at a Frankfurt hotel for our EndMeeting before we fly back the next day. We meet together, pray together, and just celebrate what God has done during the summer!

After the meeting is over, He comes up and wants to talk to me privately. As He explains it to me, before He and She ever left the States on this project, they had planned to travel around a little together, visiting friends in Italy. He wanted to know what I thought He should do in light of the current situation.

I told him, “GO HOME! Are you crazy? After all you guys have been through—what are you thinking??

Against my advice, He and She traveled together to Italy.

Three months later, they were engaged.

In May of the next year I performed their wedding ceremony!!

Unbelievable!

But as we have pointed out to our workers each year since, what was the effect on the mission project? So, because of this incident—and many similar others, LST has a very strict no Romance policy—sometimes called affectionately our NO LOVE policy.  Today it is Expectation #5 – Use all of your time for developing spiritual relationships and none of it for romantic relationships.

Btw, He and She had many happy years of marriage until He died of a brain tumor just a few years ago. They were faithful Christians, leaders in their churches, all of their years together.

Lord, forgive me the sins of my youth!

 

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November 22-24 : Last Stop!

Posted in Christian Missions, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on November 23, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The city of Rothenburg ob der Taube was first settled in 960 A.D.  OK, stop and think about that for a moment. That is 532 years before Columbus discovered America.  I hardly know how to relate to dates like that.  But here is the date that really caused me to pause and think:  the first Christian church was built in Rothenburg in 968. 

Now I know that the 10th century is 900 years after Paul started churches in Turkey, Greece, and other places, but what that means is that people in this valley next to the Taube River have had some exposure to the name of Jesus and the story of Jesus for over one thousand years.

One thousand years is time enough for many things to happen, for instance:

  • the simple story of Jesus can morph into a complicated, unknowable story, one that only seminary-educated people are supposed to or expected to know.
  • the community of Christ can evolve into a state-organized community listed primarily on rolls for tax collection purposes.
  • the faith of those that would leave the civilized world to build a church in the middle of paganism can evolve into a kind of Christian paganism–a phrase that to me means simple disbelief of the real story but a disbelief described  in words that were formerly Christian words.
  • the buildings constructed on the backs of and at the expense of several generations of peasants, a sacrifice made because of very simple faith but devout faith, these buildings are now museums, some museums of culture and others museums of faith–not much difference really.
  • the values preached and practiced by those earliest Christians have had time to simply be absorbed into the culture–no longer recognized as Christian values, just good values.

All of these thoughts, rather than being reason for discouragement, can also be taken as a challenge for the Christian warrior–not an image we really use very much any more.  At the Euro-American Retreat in Rothenburg, there are about 135 people from twenty different countries, many of whom qualify as Christian warriors though.

There are American missionaries from Albania, from France, from Belgium, from Austria. There are national evangelists from Romania,  from Ukraine, from Italy, from Germany. Then there are the foot soldiers, not missionaries or preachers, but Christians who live in the middle of pagan, of secular, of formerly Christian and formerly Communistic societies, who are here to be encouraged and strengthened, so that they can go back and fight some more!

That’s one of the reasons we love being on mission fields with people who live in mission fields. They know they are in a battle, they know that they are fighting against immense odds. Nothing would suggest that they will win the battle–nothing except their absolute faith in the Victory of Jesus. 

Thanks to Phil Jackson from Missions Resource Network for keeping this retreat alive. It began as an American military retreat when Europe was full of American soldiers. Phil has developed a quality program for all Christians and a growing number now recognize the benefit of spending these 4-5 days together.  Let me recommend it to you!

Tomorrow, Sherrylee, Cassie, and I leave for home via an overnight in London. We are going to take Cassie to the Tower of London and to Phantom of the Opera.  She may remember London more in the future, but I believe she will be shaped more by the conversations with Bill Wilson, with the van Erps, with the Brazles–both couples–and with the workers in Hildesheim. I’m so glad she is with us in Rothenburg; I want her to be a true believer in the Victory for the rest of her life!!

Thanks for going with us on this journey.  We will talk again next week after we recover from Thanksgiving.

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November 14-16: Can A Church Be Exemplary in Germany??

Posted in Other, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on November 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been computer-less for the last three days, so I know I’m a little behind, but you are going to forgive me when you read about the great church, I want to tell you about today.

On Sunday the 14th, while all of America was asleep, Sherrylee and I worshipped with the church of Christ in Chemnitz, Germany–a vibrant, thriving, encouraging family of God that I can’t wait to tell you about.

But the story begins in 1990 with our first visit to the same city. We traveled with Daryl and Gail Nash into what just a few months before had been Karl-Marx-Stadt. As we drove into the city, the big communist sign had butcher paper across it with the name CHEMNITZ in magic marker.

Daryl and Gail and their daughter Morgan moved to Chemnitz in1991 and began a wonderful experiment in tentmaking missions. We opened a private language school in Chemnitz named ABC English Language School which Daryl and Gail operated for almost a decade.  The idea was to provide them financial support AND to grow so that the school could hire more Christian teachers to come and support them as well, creating a self-funded mission team.

At its zenith, the school supported about eight people and opened a second branch in Zwickau, Germany. Of course, Gail and Daryl began worshipping in Chemnitz with one other person who had been baptized by Reiner Kallus in Oelsnitz–a small group of Christians who had migrated from the Lutheran church almost immediately after the collapse of the wall through Reiner’s efforts.

Mostly because of the potential and because of the Nashes in Chemnitz, it wasn’t long until Larry and Pam Sullivan decided to move to Chemnitz and focus their full-time efforts with the newly-formed church. Then just a few years later, Jack and JoAnn McKinney, former missionaries in Switzerland and retired from Harding University, moved to Chemnitz for about five years to help the new congregation mature.

Somewhere in all of this Clyde and Gwen Antwine, former missionaries in Germany and then teaching missions at Oklahoma Christian, befriended the Sullivans and began coming each year to help them and encourage them. Clyde became the head of the Helpers In Missions internship program at Memorial Road Church of Christ, so he began sending interns to Chemnitz regularly.

And, of course, Let’s Start Talking had been sending teams each year from the beginning. The LST teams worked mostly with students at the ABC English school who wanted the extra experience in English.

Now almost twenty years later, the church is 50-60 people, mostly Germans (which is sometimes unusual), lots of young people, young families with young children, and with German leadership–in other words, a very healthy, growing, and encouraging congregation. 

The Nashes left twelve years ago, ABC English closed, and the Sullivans have done such a good job that they are preparing to move to Leipzig in the next year to help with a new church plant there.  Karen Neel, who came as an ABC English teacher originally, is teaching at a private school and continues to provide an evangelistic spirit to the church, the Antwines continue to send HIM workers as the church requests, and LST is still a regular part of the church’s plan for reaching new people.

I couldn’t help but asking myself why Chemnitz has continued to grow and has become such a strong church while so many other efforts in Europe are either stagnant or have failed completely, and I keep coming back to one major difference. Of course the only real answer is that God has acted mightily here, but from a purely practical side, I think that the difference has been the fact that Chemnitz has been a large team effort–not just a team effort, but a large team effort, which is so rare in Europe.

I’ve written about this once earlier this year in the series on Great Churches, so you might look back and see a more exhaustive look at the idea, but I think Chemnitz is another example of what could be done in Europe with lots of people over a longer period of time with sustained efforts–and much prayer!

We left Chemnitz on Sunday and visited with Karen Abercrombie, who with her husband Mark and the Sullivans, are starting the new work in Leipzig. I hope many of you will find ways to join them in this work and that God will bless this new work.  Perhaps He looks down and says, “Well, they do care after all. Lots of my people care about Leipzig!”‘

We left Leipzig and drove toward Mainz where we visited with Alex and Cass Huffman and their baby girl Noah.  You won’t believe the story they have . . . .

PS. Don’t forget that I’m posting pictures as we go on my Facebook page. Sorry, I can’t get them off my phone to add to the blog directly.

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November 9 – Bucharest: Bullet Holes In the Walls

Posted in Christian Missions, Traveling Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , on November 10, 2010| 3 Comments »

The first time I was in Bucharest, Romania, was Spring of 1990, just months after the revolution. The streets were empty, the stores were empty, the people were friendly–but empty, and there were bullet holes in the walls of many of the downtown buildings.  One of my strongest memories is of how the main road from the airport to  the city had to be navigated through huge potholes.

Well, the potholes are gone, the streets are full of cars, the stores are full of stuff, the bullet holes are gone except for the museum pieces, the people are still friendly–but as in much of Eastern Europe, the emptiness of 1990 has only been filled with materialism, not God.

One of the earliest LST workers in Romania was Bubba Cook–he goes by Albert in Romania, but I noticed that most of his friends still call him Bubba, so I will too.  He did short-term work for four years in several cities in Romania, and after completing his Masters at Harding Graduate School in Memphis, he was invited back to Bucharest to work full-time.  He married one of the young women in the church Lavinia and now ten years later, they have two beautiful children Bogdan and Lara. (See their picture on my Facebook page–I can’t figure out how to get to these pictures from public computers!)

But their road has not been easy. The main church in Bucharest is typical of many “post-war” churches in Europe.  Feeding on the brokenness and emptiness of the Communist era, the immediate impact of the love of Christians and the gospel story touched many post-revolution lives, so at one point in the first ten years, the congregation numbered over 300 members here in Bucharest. As people recovered economically, however, they began filling their lives with things other than God, so the numbers are down to under 50 in this same church. 

It is an old story in Europe. Frankfurt had at least three congregations that built buildings to hold 1000 people after WWII; all the buildings emptied and now have been sold, and the body of members continues to shrink with each year–and it is one of the better churches!  The same story unfolded in Japan after WWII, so this is not a country-specific spiritual disease, but one that threatens every congregation in its own story.  You can probably think of some great American churches of the past that are struggling to keep their doors open now.

As this kind of slow death begins to occur in a church, the macro-struggles of the church to survive only reflect the micro-struggles of individual Christians in the church–and often on the mission field, the missionaries or the national evangelists receive the brunt of the frustrations the church feels as it declines.

Without getting into the details of their story–because it is their story–Bubba and Lavinia shared with us many of their frustrations and their struggles. We talked and we prayed for them and know that God will continue to lead them, but they are still dodging the potholes in the roads in Romania.  Bubba is actually enrolled in doctoral studies at a seminary here in Bucharest and doing very well. I think God has great plans for him and Lavinia.  Our advice to him was simple:  “Don’t quit!”

We visited with two of the Romanian leaders of the church of Christ in Bucharest–wonderful young men, full of the love of God, and as we talked about LST in Bucharest and how we might help, they began raising the same kinds of survival questions that Bubba and Lavinia had raised. We talked about how churches plateau in Europe at about 50, then they reach a point where it takes all their manpower to sustain the church, so they quit reaching out to new people. First, they just level out, then they start to shrink. When they start to shrink, they get scared of shrinking, so they throw all their energy into trying to rescue each other, which brings them closer to each other–but makes an even more closed group for any new people to try to enter–so eventually they settle into a comfortable number–and they stay comfortable until they die.  To survive, not just to grow,  a church must continue to reach out to new people!  That is true everywhere!

We left Bucharest yesterday hopeful! All of the people we talked with were eager to reach new people, to once again offer the Great News of Jesus to the Romanian people in a way that they can really see Jesus, not just as a flat-faced icon, but as the One who loves them and died for them, the One who can really fill the emptiness in their lives.  Pray for the work in Romania.

Today, we are in Kiev, Ukraine.  I can’t wait to see what God has in mind for us today!  I’ll try to tell you tomorrow.

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Raising Kids to Have A Heart for Missions: Teach Them To Read!

Posted in Raising Children To Have A Heart For Missions, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 26, 2010| 3 Comments »

Our  seven year-old granddaughter Anna was dressed for Sunday a little early last week, so she sat down with her Bible and started reading Psalms.  Then I heard her start singing Psalm 1, just making up a melody as she went. It was actually pretty good. When finished with Psalm 1, she went on to Psalm 2 and so forth until her sister got ready and we could leave.

We got into the car to drive to church and Anna was still singing. I noticed then that she stopped, flipped the pages in her Bible, then burst out into “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine.”

I didn’t slam on the brakes, but I did look over and see that she had opened her Bible and was beginning with Chapter One to sing the Song of Solomon. Yikes!  I said, “Anna, what are you singing?” She stopped and said, Well, I’ve never read the Song of Solomon before, but if he wrote a song, it must be beautiful, so I wanted to sing it!”

No matter how precocious she is, I did not think her ready for the fawns and gazelles, so I diverted her attention from the Song of Songs—only temporarily, I’m sure.

Sherrylee and I will not have much to leave to our kids when we are gone, but we will leave with all of them our love for reading. Our parents gave it to us as a special gift—and we are both very grateful.  Both Sherrylee and I were the kind of kids who would check out ten books at a time—the weekly limit—from the Bookmobile that came through the neighborhood during our childhood summers.  I don’t read that many anymore, but I did just get a Kindle for my birthday.

When we were taking our younger children to Europe each summer, one of the most pleasant pre-departure tasks we had as parents was to find and pack enough books for the 8-10 week trip. We often took a whole suitcase full of nothing but books for the family—back before the airlines charged for extra luggage.  We would buy them at the half-price book stores, or we would check them out of the local library.  We may still have some lost book fines to pay in Edmond—don’t anybody check, please!

Now Philip and Emily both got into reading pretty easily, but Benjamin was more of an outdoors kid, so he didn’t really want to slow down long enough to read much. We worried a little about his reading—not his skills, but his love for reading, whether or not he would develop it.  The summer before third grade though, however, was the breakthrough. Before he had only been reading the simplest little books to satisfy his teachers at school, but that summer, I remember walking up to the attic room in Hannover, Germany, where we were housed and finding Ben totally absorbed in Lord of the Rings!  He read the whole book—and has continued to be a great reader to this day.

Rarely do our grandkids come for anything that Mimi (Sherrylee) doesn’t pull out a book or two to read to anyone who will listen to her!  But what does this have to do with raising children to have hearts for the mission of God??  I think you know, but let me just remind you.

  • Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path!(Ps. 119:105) If children grow up loving to read, they will also learn to love to read the Word. With the Word in their hearts, they will have a lamp for their feet and a clear path in front of them.  Don’t you want that for your children?
  • How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.(Ps. 119:9) Purity of heart is part of knowing and fulfilling the mission of God. Purity of heart is not an accident. Purity is a result of the Word in the heart of your child, and at some point, what they read will become more important than what you tell them.
  • Then I will answer the one who taunts me, for I trust in your word.(Ps. 119:42) The taunts of children and/or teens are devastatingly damaging to the desires of our children. Reading gives them both the shield they need and the trust they need to win those battles.
  • Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. (Ps. 143:8) Confidence! Self-confidence is what we are tempted to desire for our children, but much better is God-confidence and they will only get that from knowing Him and how He has dealt with His creation throughout history. Past experience is what builds confidence.  Reading is a way to gather all those rich experiences and make them our own.

Our grandkids are just like yours or your own children: some like to read, some would rather watch movies, some only want to play outside, others are struggling to learn to read—just normal kids like yours. But their grandparents are praying that they will be children, then teens, then adults who love to read. Their grandparents are giving them books, reading to them, and reading in front of them.  IT’S VERY IMPORTANT!

Over and over again, Jesus raises the question during his ministry:  Haven’t you read . . . ? Just look up the word read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke and be amazed at how often Jesus assumes that people should have known God’s will because it had been written for them.

I think he was saying, you are going to live in the heart of God’s Will so much more easily if you love to read . . . His Word!

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Raising Kids to Have a Heart for Missions: Who Is the Center of Your Universe!

Posted in Raising Children To Have A Heart For Missions, tagged , , , , , , , on October 20, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I love baseball! I started in Little League when I was 10 years-old and by the time I was eleven, I had found my position. I was a pitcher. I threw hard and could get the ball over the plate—all you need to dominate when you are eleven!

One Wednesday night when I was eleven, I was having a great night. After four innings of our five-innings game, the other team had no hits. I had pretty much struck out every batter.  But it was 7:15 and church started at 7:30.

My mom and dad gave me the choice of staying or leaving, but there was no doubt what they thought the right decision was, so we left the game and went to church.  No regrets, not really any big deal. In my family, it was just the right thing to do.

Now, I know that we have discovered that Wednesday nights don’t count—so it may be difficult to even relate to family values that were so different, but it is not about Wednesday nights. It’s about an 11-year kid learning that what he is doing is not the most important thing in the world.

That was 1958. Let me show you how that translated into the Woodward family of 1987. Ben, our middle son, loves everything sports, but especially baseball.  By the time he was eleven, he had played several seasons of Little League—or parts of several seasons.  You see, when Ben was four years old, Sherrylee and I started taking our family to Europe each summer for Let’s Start Talking mission projects.

I would usually go with the students about mid-May and Sherrylee would stay home with the kids until school was out about June 1.  Little league baseball season usually started about the first of May and went until the end of June.  This meant that Ben was only around for a couple of weeks of practice and a 3-4 games at the most–every summer.

We always registered Ben for Little League. We always paid the fee for the whole season and we paid for the uniform. We got the bat and the glove that he needed, and we made sure that he got to every practice and every game—BUT, Ben knew that baseball and his activities were not at the center of our familiy’s summer activities.

We did not ignore Ben’s needs. No matter where we were in Europe, we bought a daily newspaper for him so he could study the box scores and follow his baseball teams.  Every year, we asked friends who had Armed Forces Network television to tape the All-Star Game for us, and then whenever we passed through their city, we would all sit down and watch the All-Star game with Ben.

I don’t remember Ben ever complaining. I don’t know if he knew what he was learning.  He knew we loved him, but he knew that he was not at the center of our family’s universe.

I could have told you about purchasing dumbbells in Germany and taking them around wherever we went so that Philip could lift weights after he started playing prep football. We didn’t stay home.

We did all kinds of things for our kids while we were traveling every summer, knowing that we wanted them to love what we were doing. We went to theme parks, we put all three of them in German church camp, and one summer we even arranged for Philip to go to soccer camp in the Netherlands—where he was the only “foreigner.”  But we did not stay home!

For most kids, I would not advise preaching the “seek ye first the kingdom of God” sermon to make this point. That’s a sermon for parents.  For kids, it suffices to learn from the decisions their parents make that the world—especially the world of their family—does not center on them! They are important—but not the center.

Then, of course, the big question becomes what is the center of your family’s universe? If you want to make sure that your children grow a heart for the mission of God, then make sure they see you making decisions that clearly make the mission of God the center of your family’s world!

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Raising Children to Have A Heart For Missions: Can They Sleep Without Their Blankey?

Posted in Raising Children To Have A Heart For Missions, tagged , , , , , , on October 14, 2010| 4 Comments »

I once mentioned to our daughter Emily while planning a family road trip, that she might enjoy the trip more if she invited a friend to go along with her.  She appreciated the gesture, but her negative reaction surprised me.  She said, “Dad, none of my friends ever do car trips with their family. They say they could not stand to be cooped up together in the car for so long at one time!”

My surprise has been reinforced many times since then with parents who won’t fly with their children “because the kids could never sit still that long,” or parents who won’t disrupt their children’s schedules for . . .  well, for almost any reason.

Believe me, I do know the hassle of packing for a family of five, the challenge of driving thousands of miles with three kids in the back of a Volkswagon Golf, of dealing with jetlag with a baby that can’t tell time, so I’m not oblivious to what it takes.

On the other hand, how will we ever teach our children to have a heart for missions, if we as their parents are not willing to do whatever it takes to expose them to the life of one who lives within the mission of God?

We will approach this same question from many angles, but today I want to talk about instilling in your children an essential trait for everyone who loves the mission of God—flexibility!

I don’t know where Sherrylee and I got this idea, but very early in our marriage, we decided that our children would learn flexibility from the very beginning of their lives.  This was a conscious decision on our part, not just a necessary reaction to our lifestyle.

But what did this mean in practice?  At their earliest ages, it meant the following:

  • Wherever we went, they went! At three weeks, baby Philip traveled to Cologne with us where he got stuck in his Kinderwagon in the revolving doors of the Cologne cathedral!  Ben flew back to the States with Sherrylee and Philip (2 ½ ) at six weeks, and Emily had four Atlantic crossings by the time she was six months old.  LST started in 1980 when our children were 6, 4, and 2, and we all spent 6-10 weeks traveling together by plane, train, and car for the next ten years. 
  • We never reinforced “structured requirements” like sleeping in my own bed, special blankets or dollies that they couldn’t do without, or even “shhhh, no noise while the baby is sleeping!” If this sounds draconian to you, let me just defend myself a bit by saying that we were not compulsively structure busters, but we just did not want our kids to require these things in order to be decent human beings!
  • We did not really ever find the words “I’m bored” to be appropriate. Our kids road in our back seat for literally thousands of miles each summer as we traveled between LST mission points.  This is where they learned to do without television, to read, to listen to all kinds of music, to beat their parents in games like the ABC game or Bible Twenty Questions (Ben stumped us all once with “the white knight”!  We said, Ben, there is no white knight in the Bible. He replied, Yes, there is—in the book of Revelation—and he was right! Read Revelation 6.)
  • The children never heard their parents use their needs as an excuse for avoiding something important! I will admit that sometimes we were so tired that while staying in other people’s homes, we fought over who got to go in and put the kids to bed—and we usually fell asleep as well! In fact, what I see not only in our own family, but in the families that take their children on missions is that the children become the reason FOR going, never an excuse for NOT going.  What is the message any child at any age gets when he/she hears their parents say, “Well, maybe when the kids are older!” or “The kids are too busy with their summer activities!” or “It’s too much hassle with the kids. Maybe when we are empty-nesters!!”?

If you want your children to have a heart for the mission of God, then teach them from the first days of their lives to put the needs of others before their own—including things as basic as their own creature comforts.

We recently had a family stay with us that has spent well over a decade in Africa as missionaries. This family has two wonderful children, ages 10 and 12.  We heard from them after they arrived back in Africa and had been there a couple of days, the younger child said, “Dad, it’s so good to be home. I love Africa. I love to sweat. I really missed that in America! “ Children have a great capacity for flexibility—usually greater than the parents.

Teach your children to become all things to all people so that by all means some can be saved!

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For Those Who Have Fire In Your Bones, Part 2: Expanding Your Circle

Posted in Other, tagged , , , , , , on October 1, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The pre-start and the start-up phases of any new ministry are hard, but exhilarating. Typically, you have the most passionate and the most committed people involved, so these Starters are willing to do whatever it takes.  Starters are heart, soul, and mind committed!

As the start-up continues, the Friends of the Starters observe the commitment and enthusiasm—as well as the results that follow the  do-whatever-it-takes efforts of the Starters, so they join up and become a part of the ministry—with equal enthusiasm, but not necessarily with equal commitment as the Starters.  But the ministry has grown because both Starters and First Volunteers are part of the ministry, and it appears to have a great future.

A small cloud looms on the horizon, however. First Volunteers do enjoy the work of the ministry; however, they did not come into the ministry to recruit, but to serve. The reluctance to recruit in this second phase means there are fewer Second Volunteers than First Volunteers.

The Second Volunteers are the friends typically of the First Volunteers. They really enjoy working together, so now the First and Second Volunteers merge into a pretty wonderful, but fairly self-contained group—so they recruit no one else and there are almost no Third Volunteers for the ministry.

This promising ministry is completely unaware that it is in a crisis it may not survive! With no new volunteers, no one takes the place of the Second and Third Volunteers that have to drop out for quite normal reasons.  Attrition is predictable.  Typically, Starters and First Volunteers just step into the gaps because they still are doing whatever it takes.

Then more Second Volunteers and some First Volunteers step out—and Starters start pushing everyone to recruit more Volunteers—but especially the Second and Third Volunteers did not commit to the ministry to be recruiters—so they talk to a friend or two, but that is it.

For many ministries, this is the almost predictable slide into an inevitable conclusion—a whimpering end of the ministry with many regrets. I’m sure you have observed some recognizable version of this story in your own church, if not your own attempts at ministries.

Here are a few suggestions for breaking this pattern and prolonging the effective life of your ministry!

1. You never have enough new people! If the ideal number of workers is 10, then seek 20 and plan on seeking replacements continually.  If the ministry does not have a recruiting strategy , purposefully and intentionally organized to bring in new people, it will not survive long.

2. Those involved in the ministry are the best recruiters. Every volunteer can be asked to be a recruiter. Some will be better than others, but every new person should feel some responsibility for recruiting others.

3. Keep recruiting personal. Pulpit announcements, videos, church bulletin announcements can create some general name recognition of the ministry, but one person tapping another on the shoulder saying, “Come go with me” will yield greater results.

4. Teach volunteers how to expand their circle of friends. Most workers invite their immediate friends—and then they stop because to talk to others is outside of their comfort zone. One way to expand their circles is to help them recognize other points of contact at church that exist, but that they do not necessarily think of right away. For instance:

  1. Parents of their children’s friends
  2. People who sit in seats near them at church services
  3. Common demographic groups at church—parents of teens, retired, but still active, stay-at-home moms.
  4. New people at church who have yet to be plugged into a group or ministry.

5.  Utilize the best recruiters among your volunteers! Former cheerleaders (like Sherrylee) are much better recruiters than bookworms (me!).  Use people’s natural talents. It may be more important for someone to Sherrylee to recruit than any other task in your ministry!

How long the ministry will thrive and survive depends to some extent on the ability of the Starters to recognize the need for expanding its circle of friends.  The earlier in the ministry that friend-building becomes a part of the model, the greater chance of blessed longevity the ministry will have.

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For Those Who Have Fire In Their Bones

Posted in Christian Missions, Other, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

You are not the preacher. You are not the head of anything at church. But you have a great ministry just started, or a great ministry idea that you would like to see get traction and grow.  What do you do now? Here are a few tips from our experience of trying to get Let’s Start Talking established in lots of churches. This is what we have learned from watching people enthusiastic about short-term missions try to work with their home congregation.

  1. Don’t even start unless you are committed to doing whatever it takes to succeed yourself! Lots of people want to start things for other people to do. Just forget it! You should be able to accomplish the ministry yourself—at some level—or you will never get others to buy into it. For LST, this means that if you are not willing to go, you will not be successful in getting other people to go.
  2. Try to get the blessing of church leadership from the very beginning. If the preacher and/or church leaders are opposed to your ministry idea, it is not likely to survive. It might possibly survive if they are indifferent, but the chances are much better if you have their blessing.  Notice, I said blessing, not commitment. See below!
  3. Do not expect to get leadership commitment to your ministry until you have proven that it will be successful! LST actually made this mistake in our Centurion project which launched about three years ago. We asked churches to commit to a goal of sending 100 workers with LST over a five-year period—with no financial commitment whatsoever.  Although a few churches committed, we were absolutely shocked at how resistant most churches were to making any kind of a commitment at all.  We have since modified our approach, so that we only ask for permission to test run LST in their congregation to see if their members have a good experience with it.  Church leaders are much more open to us with this approach.
  4. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Join with established ministries who have proven track records and who can help jumpstart your ministry. So you think your teens should do mission trips to learn to share their faith! Rather than asking your youth minister or some parents to plan and organize such a trip, why not ask a ministry like LST YoungFriends to help you, since we have been planning short-term missions, including special ones for teen groups, for thirty years! If you want to start something for the poor, why not contact existing ministries and partner with them–or after-school programs, or abused women, or English As A Second Language outreach??
  5. Be spiritually prepared to be ignored. If I were a church leader and if I knew what kind of transformation happens to every person who spends two weeks on an LST project, I would do everything in my power to make it possible for every person in the church I was leading to participate—there, I said it as boldly and honestly as I can.  However, the fact is that a very small percentage of Christians really want to engage their faith as actively as most ministries require. If you, as the promoter of your ministry, let the massive indifference discourage you, then you are defeated! You must be willing to do your work without recognition, without popularity, and without any other reward than the smile of the Father!  If you need more than this, you will give up!
  6. God has His own schedule for growth! I love flowers—Sherrylee calls them annuals and perennials and I have a vague idea what that means. But I really love flowering trees. I love the blooms on our fruit trees, I love the beautiful white flowers of the Bradford pear trees, and I really love the Oklahoma redbuds!! The time from seed to bloom is very different for these plants. In reality, only God knows the proper time and season for your ministry to bloom. You can choose to acknowledge God’s sovereignty here—or you can try to set your own schedule. Occasionally, we may be able to hothouse something into rapid growth—but these efforts are rarely long-lived. I recommend you let God be in control.
  7. If you are called by God to a ministry, you will never be truly happy until you are answering the call—so get on with it!  I love the story of Jeremiah, called by God to be a prophet to the nations, who yells at God and says, “You deceived me! I did what you called me to do and I’m having a terrible time! In fact, I’ve tried to quit several times . . . but I couldn’t because your word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones–and I can’t keep it in.” (Jer. 20:7-9)

One of the biggest problems ministries have is surviving the exhilarating start-up phase.  I’ll give you some suggestions about that in the next post.

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