Thief! Hold Him! Hit Him!

There was a lot of crime in the Melanesian country where I grew up. Much of this was the result of the breakdown of old tribal structures and community as locals moved to the cities and towns to find work, only to find themselves caught up in money problems and addictions. It’s a story that has played out all over the world as previously isolated tribal societies crash, head-on, into modernity.

This is not to say that their previous tribal isolation was better. On the contrary, there are few societies so dark and so stripped of common grace as a pre-Christian, animistic jungle tribe. The whole noble savage thing is a convenient fiction created by Westerners who apparently needed this fantasy to make sense of their own society’s continued brokenness. It is, to use a newer term, a luxury belief, one you can only afford if you yourself are not living in that kind of situation or truly friends with those who are.

The prevalence of robbery and armed assault, especially in the cities and towns, meant that foreigners and missionaries needed to be alert and intentional whenever heading to the market, the grocery store, or even just going for a walk. Men needed to be careful with their wallets and backpacks due to pickpockets (and presumably now phones as well). They needed to walk several paces behind any women with them in order to keep an eye out for any potential trouble.

Women or girls needed to dress modestly, usually in skirts and loose clothing, and to use purses or bags that they could strap across their torsos. The local woven bags with long straps that both men and women use in that culture were perfect for this. Wearing these bags of spun plant fibers, fur, or colorful yarn also signaled to locals a respect and appreciation for their culture that won friends when out in public and distinguished you from the cash-laden tourists.

In this kind of high-crime context, my mom was a stellar example of how knowing the local language and culture, and going everywhere with local friends, could lead to a surprising degree of freedom and favor. My mom is a short, petite woman, and for most of our years living in Melanesia, she was a young widow, an easy target. But she tended to experience far fewer security incidents than other foreign women because of the posture she struck with the locals. No matter the country, locals are able to pick up on which foreigners extend a humble, genuine friendship of equality. And not only does this mean you make lifelong (and sometimes eternal) friends. It also makes you far safer. Many of the MK girls in my school also did an admirable job of navigating these dynamics well, despite the many challenges.

But even the most careful or skillful sometimes get careless – or become a target even though they did everything ‘right.’ In case we were ever attacked, locals and adult missionaries taught us that we had options. In particular, other locals who were present would leap to our defense if you called out in the trade language, “Thief! Hold him! Hit him!!!” This is because even though crime was so prevalent, it was still despised in the local honor-shame culture. So, calling out this kind of phrase while an attack was happening could mean the sudden appearance of a crowd of local vigilantes eager to help you – and to teach the thief a good lesson with their fists.

I’d heard the stories. But I’d never seen it happen, nor been forced to use this defense mechanism myself. One part of me hoped I’d never have to. Another part of me was curious. Would a mob of friendly locals really materialize out of nowhere and rally to my defense if I remembered to yell the magic words?

One afternoon in my 11th or 12th grade year, my mom, I, and one of the girls in my class went into town together to do some errands. This girl was a close friend with whom I was in an on-again, off-again relationship. I believe when this incident took place, we were in another season of deciding to just stay good friends. I’m pretty sure there were some feelings still there, at least on my part. High school is a confusing time for the heart. But we were committed to navigating the confusion in such a way that we could preserve our friendship as fellow believers, for which I remain very thankful.

Regardless, there was enough trust there for her family to feel comfortable with her going into town with us, even though not having an adult man present was technically against mission policy. My family, for understandable reasons, was often granted an exception to this rule.

We had finished up our errands when we decided, on a whim, to stop into a little shop on Main Street to get some deep-fried snacks for the ride home. I loved (and still miss) the deep-fried flour balls made in that country called skon. Cheap, hot, and sprinkled with salt, I was always down to munch on a bag of skons on the way back from a town or river trip.

My mom chose to remain with the car out front (another one of those security practices that was commonplace) while I went into the snack shop with my friend. Because it was such a short stop, she left her shoulder bag in the car and just grabbed her little money pouch. It was small inside the shop, with a little greasy lobby area for customers and a huge glass display case full of fried snacks illuminated with a yellow-red light. I went up to the little window and put in an order while my friend waited by the wall a couple of meters behind me. The heavy aroma of fried goodness and grease wafted all around us.

I’m not sure what exactly caused me to turn around. But when I did, I saw something strange. My friend’s face had gone sheet white, her eyes wide and her mouth open in silent shock. She was locked in a quiet but panicked struggle with a short, muscled local man. I could only see him from behind. One hand, I could see, was desperately trying to rip my friend’s money pouch out of her hand. I couldn’t see his other hand.

You always wonder what you’ll do when faced with a situation that requires a split-second decision to act. I’m convinced you can never truly know until you’re in it. But it sure helps, for boys and men in particular, to have repeatedly made the decision ahead of time that, if at all possible, we will act. Stories of courage from the Bible, good books, and stories from my dad’s life helped me make these many small preparatory decisions. Even Bilbo Baggins played a role in growing my resolve to be courageous. But when the moment finally came, all I can say is that, by the grace of God, I acted.

I charged across the room and threw my arm around the assailant’s neck in a headlock to pull him off my friend. With a burst of strength that really surprised me, I jerked him out the door while yelling something at him in English. He was a much bigger guy than I was in terms of muscle mass, but in that moment, it seemed like he weighed nothing at all. In the couple of seconds it took for us to stumble out of the shop, he spun around and swung a small blade at my stomach. It passed a few inches from me, and I remember immediately registering the flash of metal and letting him go.

The assailant then started running down the sidewalk as I stood, blinking. Suddenly, I remembered the phrase I was supposed to yell.

“THIEF! HOLD HIM! HIT HIM!!!” I yelped, hoping someone would respond.

Would it actually work? As he rounded the corner, I saw a few bystanders start to take off after him. Then I went back into the shop to check on my friend.

She was, of course, very shaken up and barely able to respond to my questions. But it seemed she was okay. The man had pressed the blade against her stomach, but not cut her. She had locked up in panic, meaning that even though she wanted to, she could neither scream nor let go of her money pouch. I saw that coins were scattered all over the floor. Being myself in a pretty confused state of mind, I started shakily picking up the coins off the floor and asking the staff behind the counter if we could still get our order.

We waited for a minute or two, minds flooded with adrenaline and hands shaking, when a police vehicle screeched to a stop in front of the shop.

“We were parked around the corner,” the smiling officer said, “when we saw this man being chased by a big crowd right toward us. We got to him before the crowd could – lucky man. He’s in the back now. They said he attacked you. Is that true?”

I nodded yes.

“Follow us to the station, then.”

In a blur, the three of us drove down the street to the police station. Inside, we were ushered into a dirty and faded blue room with holes in the walls where the assailant was sitting in a chair, hands handcuffed behind his back.

The police officer was clearly enjoying the whole situation and continued smiling in a disconcerting way. Many of the police in that country are corrupt and heavy-handed in their tactics, demanding bribes on the highways and burning down whole villages in response to tribal warfare. The handful that we knew who were believers were markedly different. But this big man seemed to be of the more common, unregenerate variety.

“Is this the man who attacked you?” he asked, lifting up the attacker’s face.

“Yes,” I responded, “That’s him.”

Immediately, the officer swung hard and punched the man in the face. The man whimpered.

Trying to process what was going on, I continued to answer questions and to describe what happened.

“Did he have a weapon?”

“Yes, a small knife.”

“Where’s the knife!!!” he roared at the man, dealing another savage blow to the face. The man didn’t respond.

“Hahaha! You don’t see policing like this in America, do you?” the officer asked us, grinning like a villain.

He leaned over the man. “Where are you from?” he asked him softly.

“Okapa…” the man groaned.

“OKAPA!!!” the officer roared, kneeing the sitting man in the face. More cries of pain.

By now, there was a puddle of blood pooling on the floor from the man’s nose. The drips were spattering on my shoes. One look at my mom and my friend told me that this experience might be far more traumatizing than the actual assault itself.

“So, do you want to press charges?” the officer turned and asked us.

“No!” My mom and I said together. “No… no one was hurt. And he’s already gotten enough punishment.”

“Too bad – lucky man,” the officer said, shaking his head and sneering at the man in the chair.

We got out of there as fast as we could and drove back to the mission base in a daze.

I felt terrible for what had happened, thinking my friend’s parents would never allow her to go to town with us again. However, they were extremely kind and encouraging, telling me they were proud of me and they’d be happy for their daughter to go into town with me any time. As a young man, that was one of the kindest things they could have said.

Over the next year or so, my friends and I did continue going into town, though we never went back into that particular snack shop. Thankfully, there were no more big incidents like this one.

Over time, we continued to shudder at the attempted robbery and the whole police station scene. But there was one scene of the whole event that we were later able to laugh about.

And that scene was of a skinny white boy standing in the street and squawking, “Stilman! Holim em! Paitim em!!!” (Thief! Hold him! Hit him!) and the hapless robber being pursued around the corner by an angry mob.

It really did work, after all.

There are countries out there, sadly, where strangers will not come to one another’s aid when someone attacks. But that country in Melanesia is not one of them. No, if anything, you may want to be careful rallying the mob to your defense, unless absolutely necessary. The whole time, the police, even with everything they did, were acting like they had saved the man from an even worse fate.

Yikes.

We’ve got 17k of our 20k goal still to raise this summer. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region, and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

Two Very Different Dialects of Respect

I continue to be struck by the many ways that Western culture and Central Asian culture differ in showing respect. One way to summarize these differences would be that Central Asian culture primarily respects a person by elevating them, while Western culture primarily respects a person by equalizing them.

When a Central Asian meets another Central Asian, both are trying hard to show that they feel the other person is higher than they are. They show this through the many respectful phrases and titles they drop, as well as their body language. Both are careful to formally and expressively show that they are lower, and the other is higher. This goes on for quite some time until one finally relents and, with much protest, receives the preferential treatment.

When two Americans meet, both are trying to show that they feel that the other person is their equal. They do this by doing away with titles and by acting in a relaxed, casual, relational manner. Their body language is not rigid and formal, but loose and friendly. Both are careful to demonstrate that “you know that I know that you don’t think you’re better than me,” and vice versa. This might take place with very few words spoken at all, or with something as casual as a silent chin nod.

When a Central Asian and a Westerner interact, the Westerner might come away feeling that the Central Asian was way over-the-top and uncomfortably verbose in their praise. Are they for real? Do they have an agenda? The Central Asian might come away feeling that the Westerner was strangely cold or even rude. Have I offended them? Do they think they’re that much better than me?

These differences have a lot to do with our different histories and cultural makeup. The West, especially North America, is deeply shaped by a historical reaction against the hierarchies and class system of the old world. Some of the deepest values of Western culture are tied to the dignity of the lone individual, regardless of their background or current social status. Central Asia is still very much an ancient patron-client system, where, in the absence of sound impersonal institutions, one must acquire honor and status by securing the patronage of those above you and the client services of those below you. In this kind of system, honor, respect, and reputation are central to everything – even survival.

These differences in showing respect get highlighted for us in funny ways as we navigate (sometimes daily) between Central Asian and Western cultures in Caravan City. The international church, with its global-Western hybrid culture, tells first-time guests that they don’t want to embarrass them, so they can just quickly raise their hand to receive a visitor card. They want to honor them but also to treat them as equals, and equals aren’t eager to be singled out for recognition. The Central Asian church they planted, however, asks first-time guests to stand up and introduce themselves, knowing that the chance to be visibly elevated like this in a meeting is a great honor, and one that guests will feel deeply. Both churches then clap to welcome the newcomers, and both have acted honorably according to their respective cultures.

When it comes to introducing someone speaking up front at a seminar, a Westerner will want to humanize them, to tell the audience about their personality and their hobbies, maybe a funny story. And the Western speaker will often want to connect with their audience by showing a picture of their kids or grandkids. But if a Central Asian is introducing a speaker, they’ll want to focus on their qualifications and achievements, the things that have elevated them enough to be an expert worth listening to. The Central Asian speaker will begin their talk, not by trying to humanize themselves, but by offering detailed thanks to all of the other respected figures present or not who have made it possible for them to come and speak.

Of course, Westerners do quietly enjoy being elevated. And Central Asians quietly enjoy being equalized. But neither culture can quite bring itself to lead with these things. No, they are supposed to happen indirectly, as a sort of open secret. Westerners know that the double PhD is there and is very significant, but it might embarrass the speaker if we focus on that too directly, just like it would embarrass the Central Asian speaker if we focus too much on his hobbies, spouse, or grandkids.

Having made many mistakes hopping from one culture to the other, I can say that understanding these primary dialects of respect can go a long way toward navigating such different cultures well – or at least toward navigating them functionally. You really can communicate genuine care for a Central Asian by being thoughtfully respectful and by constantly trying to elevate them. But when you’re with that Westerner, all that usually feels a bit much. Instead, be relaxed, treat them as a friend and peer, and keep the compliments select and low-key.

It is a curious thing that such different-seeming behaviors can grow from the same root virtue of honor or respect. Yet they do. And both can be a way to put on true Christian love, because both can be found in the gospel itself.

The gospel both equalizes and elevates us. In its pure and powerful light, we are all seen to be equally made in the image of God, and each also equally sinful. Those now in Christ are all equally little prophets, priests, and kings, and heirs of the resurrection. Yet each one of us is also elevated through the gospel, raised from one degree of glory to another, with differing honor and rewards bestowed in this age as well as in the age to come. Our particular tribe of Christianity will tend to focus more on one of these truths than the other, usually depending on what culture we’re in. But they’re both there in the Scriptures. “Outdo one another in showing honor” (Rom 12:10) goes hand in hand with “All are one in Christ” (Gal 3:28).

What happens when believers from both kinds of cultures mix in the same church? Well, every church must develop one primary corporate culture in order to function. There is no way around this. There’s nothing wrong if the culture your church has naturally landed on is more Western or more Central Asian, especially if this is a good reflection of your members and your community. But there’s lots of room in relationships and personal interactions to care for people by attempting to speak their dialect of respect, as it were. If you’ve got a pastor or visitor from a culture that elevates, use titles and use body language that shows you’re putting them ahead of yourself. If you’ve got a pastor or visitor from a culture that equalizes, stick to first names, and treat them like you’re old friends.

Finally, saturate it all in love and grace. There’s no world in which you learn to perfectly operate in a different culture’s dialect of respect. And others will fumble yours as well. But humble, loving, and gracious believers don’t get bent out of shape about this kind of thing. In fact, when they look carefully, they can even see that these very different words and actions stem from the very same posture of the new heart.

We’ve got 19k of our 20k goal still to raise this summer. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

Strange Encounters in Country Church Parking Lots

If you’ve ever lived near a country church parking lot, then you know there’s a lot of odd stuff that goes on there. And I don’t mean the church-related traffic.

For two different seasons while stateside, we lived in parsonages next to churches in rural Kentucky. And thus it was that I began to learn about the many and varied ways in which a community makes use of that wide-open asphalt space.

Strangers meet up at these parking lots to exchange items purchased on Facebook Marketplace. Some take their kids there to practice driving. Others pull over to change tires or to look under their hood when their car starts smoking or making suspicious noises, even leaving vehicles overnight if need be. Police cars will pull in to camp out for a while and keep an eye on the road. I don’t know if Pokémon Go is still a thing or not, but that was one reason during a certain season for many of the suspicious-looking cars that would randomly pull in for a few minutes, hover, then suddenly take off.

Mosques in our area of Central Asia have 24-7 bathroom facilities available to the public. Anyone, Muslim or not, can pull over and make use of this infrastructure if needed. In a similar way, rural church parking lots function as a kind of community resource, a private piece of property that is available for anyone to use for certain reasonable needs. I don’t know that anyone ever consciously agreed to this arrangement, but it has developed nonetheless.

However, others seem to make use of these parking lots in ways that, if the church knew about it, would clearly violate this unwritten contract. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some drug deals going down next to the old Baptist church late at night. Another time, I was startled to stumble on a random wandering man just sitting in the darkness behind the church when I was taking out the trash. Then there are the vehicles that would pull in after dark and just sit, lights on, pointed at the parsonage, for hours on end – almost as if they were watching us. Sometimes I would go out and straighten up some stuff outside in case the sight of a person keeping an eye on the place would make them conscious of their creepiness and cause them to drive off.

But none of these activities caused my heart to leap into my throat like what happened one Sunday at 2 am.

After a late night of treating diabetic lows, my wife and I were finally asleep when we were shocked awake by a horrific screeching sound. We bolted upright in bed and noticed that strange lights were flashing through the blinds and into the room. Disoriented and bleary-eyed, I peered out through the blinds. But all I could see was that the air was choked with a strange, flowing smoke or mist, oddly lit up in a way that didn’t make any sense for 2 am. The loud screeching and roaring wasn’t stopping.

Was our city under attack? Had the neighboring regimes finally had enough and decided to invade? Wait, no, we weren’t in Central Asia. We were in rural Kentucky. What then? Had some demon-UFO come to harass us like something straight out of the Haunted Cosmos podcast?

Then, all at once, I realized what was happening. The church secretary had foretold that such a time would come. And she had solemnly deputized me, for such a time as this, to be the guardian of the church parking lot.

I girded up my loins, threw on a gray bathrobe, grabbed a bright flashlight, and rushed out to the porch. In my bare feet, I ran into the smoke to confront the foes with all the bleary-eyed middle-aged righteous indignation I could muster.

The teenagers had come. Yes, they had come to do donuts and spin-outs with their little souped-up sports cars.

Now, there’s nothing in particular that I would normally have against teenagers doing donuts and spin-outs in an empty lot. After all, I used to enjoy doing them with my ATV back in high school in Melanesia. But Miss Peggy, the secretary, had told me they had just paid an arm and a leg to redo the parking lot surface and that this kind of activity would seriously damage it again.

Plus, it was 2 am. And they had nearly given my family a heart attack.

Through the clouds of smoke and screeches caused by spinning rubber, I staggered, shining my light in as menacing a manner as I could and yelling something terrifying like, “HEY… YOU KIDS!” My hair was wild, and my eyes were wide. All that was missing were some slippers on my feet and a shotgun in my hand to channel the timeless image of the old grumpy man out to ‘teach them kids a lesson.’

I must have spooked them nonetheless. Perhaps the lights cast a giant shadow of my figure onto the grey clouds of rubber smoke. Or, perhaps it was just the unexpected sight of a jumped-up, hollering dad in a bathrobe at 2 am that did it. But the faces my flashlight caught looked spooked and pale, and the three cars quickly sped off into the darkness. Leaving me standing there barefoot in the growing quiet and stinky haze, unkempt yet victorious, wishing I’d had the wits to holler something more intimidating like “ALLAHU AKBAAAAR!!!“

Oh well, next time.

Not surprisingly, we were late to church the next morning. I scowled as we crossed the parking lot and saw all the black marks the kids had made during their nighttime antics.

However, I was glad to inform Miss Peggy that I had indeed scared the intruders off. And that I’d be glad to do so again should the need arise. And that, yes, we would love some more coffee to help us stay awake during Sunday school.

The teenagers tried to come back to do donuts and spin-outs a few times after that, but I recognized their cars and was on to them at that point. I even got to talk with one of them during one of these follow-up attempts, to tell him that I had his license plate number and would have to do something with that information if they came back to do donuts again.

To his credit, he responded with a very respectful “Yessir… we won’t do it again, sir.”

I realized that in that season I had become the guardian of the church parking lot. A modest, yet worthy role. After all, rural church parking lots are weird places. Somebody’s got to keep an eye on them.

And having compared notes with others over the years, I know that I am not the only one to notice the strange things that happen in these locales. If you’ve seen some weird stuff in church parking lots yourself, be sure to let us know in the comments.

This summer, we are looking to raise 19.5k, half for our family’s support needs and half for the cost of writing, translating, and printing solid resources for local believers. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Set a Guard over Your Lips

Ever wonder what the content that we write for local believers looks and sounds like? Below is an example of an article I wrote this past year in response to the widespread sin of gossip among the young churches of our area. You’ll notice some commonalities (like using local proverbs), but also that the style of the writing is different from what I normally post here. It’s deliberately simpler and more straightforward. This is both due to the need for translating it into our local languages but also the value of prioritizing clarity over style in content written to help new believers.

That being said, gossip is not a sin limited to the churches of Central Asia. I was challenged to grow in this area as I wrote this article, and I hope that others will be helped by it also. May we all grow in speaking the truth in love.

“Talk that has gone to a tongue has gone to a city.”

This local proverb refers to the incredible speed with which rumors or gossip about other people can spread. The idea is that if even one person shares information about someone with another person, then there is a good chance that soon the whole city will know. This proverb tells us about an aspect of local culture, that the culture is full of talk about other people, full of gossip. 

However, this Central Asian culture is not alone in struggling with sins of the tongue. Humans in general have always sinfully enjoyed spreading shameful or negative information about others. The book of Proverbs bears witness to how this was the case in ancient Israel around 3,000 years ago. 

Proverbs 18:8 says, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts.” 

Because of our sinful nature, humans in all cultures, even those among God’s chosen people, have been tempted by gossip. This is because gossip seems to have a sweet taste in the beginning. However, after we have listened to gossip or shared it, it does not truly result in anything good. Instead, it results in destruction and division. 

Proverbs 16:28 says that, “A perverse person stirs up conflict. And a gossip separates close friends.” 

This verse says that it is a perverse person who stirs up conflict by talking about others. It says that this kind of person even separates the closest of friends through the harmful power of their words. In fact, our words are so powerful that the book of James says, “The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6).

Friends, do you want your whole body to be corrupted? Would you like the whole course of your life to be set on fire? Or to have your tongue set on fire by hell? God’s word says these results and judgments happen to those who do not control their tongues, those who gossip about others. 

Beloved brothers and sisters, this is one of the most important areas where local believers will need to change their culture and their daily habits. 

Many years ago, I was preaching in a house church from the Sermon on the Mount. That day, we were focusing on the section where Jesus tells his disciples not to swear by anything, but to let their yes be yes, and their no be no. After the service, a believing husband and wife said to me, “This means we need a whole new language! We don’t know how to speak our language without swearing. We swear in almost every sentence!” 

Yes, when we follow Jesus, everything changes. And one of the most clear changes should be the way in which we speak. Even though we still speak our native language, the way we speak it might be so different that, in one sense, it will seem like a new language. Unbelieving friends, relatives, and neighbors might be shocked or confused when a local believer stops telling gossip about others. But this is what Jesus requires. He requires a way of speaking that is worthy of him, especially when it comes to how believers speak about one another. 

Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.”

This verse describes the standard for every believer. All of our words must be helpful for building others up, bringing benefit to those who listen. If any word or kind of talk does not do this, then we should not say it. Gossip or shameful talk about other believers always fails this test. It fails the test because it is not helpful but hurtful to the body of Christ. It fails because it does not build others up; instead, it tears them down. And it fails because it does not bring any benefit; instead, it brings division and conflict. 

Friends, from now on, you can use this verse, Ephesians 4:29, as a filter for everything you say. You can test every word, every sentence, according to this standard, and only say it if it is helpful for building others up.

Here, some might wonder about a situation where another believer is truly sinning or damaging the church. Should we not warn other believers about them? The short answer is no. Instead of talking about them, first, believers should go to that person and gently tell them their sin face-to-face (Galatians 6:1, Matthew 18:15-17). And when you do this, don’t tell anyone else about it. Only then, if that person doesn’t repent, should you tell one or two other believers about their sin. And this is only so that they can go with you to talk to that person about their sin. Once again, at this point, don’t tell anyone else about it except for this one or two others. If, after this second step, the believer who is sinning still doesn’t repent, then you should go and talk to the pastors in your church about that person’s sin. The pastors should then consider if it’s necessary to tell the church in an appropriate way, according to Matthew 18. 

At each of these steps, limit what you say about that sinning believer to what is truly helpful and necessary. Keep your conversations about their sin short and careful, and watch out for the temptation to give in to gossiping about rumors or even true details. As Proverbs 10:19 says, “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise.”  

For example, you might see another believer lying to others about some area of his life. Without saying anything about this to anyone else, go to that believer yourself and gently talk to them about their lying. If they refuse to listen to you and refuse to repent, only then should you talk about their sin with one or two other believers so that you can make a plan to talk to the sinning believer together. If the sinning believer still refuses the counsel of this small group of believers, then privately share the situation with a pastor of your church so that, if needed, it can progress toward the next stage of church discipline. 

Brothers and sisters, even if someone is truly sinning, it is still gossip and still sinful to talk to others about that believer unless you are carefully following the Matthew 18 process that respects believers’ honor and privacy. The Bible calls us to “speak the truth in love.” Telling others about proven sin in another believer’s life may be telling them something true, but it is disobeying this command because it is not speaking that truth in a loving way. Loving other believers means we seek to keep their sins as private as possible, even while we help them to repent. This is what it means to love them and to love them truly, according to 1st Peter 4:8, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” 

Have you sinned in the way that you speak about other believers? Friends, all of us have. But praise God, we can repent of any sinful words that we have said. We can repent to God, and, if necessary, we can repent directly to those we have gossiped about. We can join the prophet Isaiah in saying, “‘Woe to me!… For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” When we repent like this, we know that the blood of Jesus is powerful to cleanse us from our sin. 

Is it really possible to stop gossiping? Can someone who has gossiped about others all their life really learn a new way of speaking where they no longer do this? Yes, through the power of the Holy Spirit, every believer can have a new way of speaking that becomes a powerful witness to others that God can truly change us. 

Believers can learn to rely on the power of God in this area by regularly praying Psalm 141:3, “Set a guard over my mouth, LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.” 

For many local believers who have grown up in a culture where gossip is so normal and accepted, this is a prayer they might need to pray every day. Probably multiple times every day. But God is faithful. Through his Holy Spirit, he truly can guard our mouths and keep watch over our lips. 

Believers gossiping about other believers is one of the greatest dangers that is destroying friendships and churches in this region. But when believers learn to speak in this new way, their speech will become one of the most powerful witnesses to the truth of the gospel. 

Yes, instead of having a tongue that spreads gossip to an entire city or sets our whole life on fire, we can have tongues that are instead like a tree of life, filling our lives with the wisdom and light of God. 

This summer, we are looking to raise 20k, half for our family’s support needs and half for the cost of writing, translating, and printing solid resources for local believers. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

A Proverb on Substance over Appearances

His mind is in his eyes

-Local oral tradition

I recently learned the above proverb from a local friend. “You know what our people are like,” he said, “His mind in his eyes and all that.”

The sense of the proverb was mostly clear to me, since we were speaking of a situation where appearances were prioritized over substance, but it was the first time I’d heard what is evidently a very common proverb of corporate self-critique among our people. 

This prioritizing of aesthetics can have upsides. Our locals make great barbers, florists, photographers, and designers. Their homes and their wardrobes tend to be neat and spotlessly clean, even among those who are not particularly well-off. But there are downsides for sure, from the merely vain, such as incessant posing for and posting photos of themselves in any kind of situation that casts them in a good light – to the long-term disastrous, such as the measure of a good woman being how she, her home, and her husband look and not whether she is raising her children well. Likewise, in school, children are told over and over again to “sit beautifully” instead of being taught to enjoy learning and to think critically. 

It confronts those in ministry as well, since the pressure from day one is to have church gatherings that look impressive on social media. This often puts locals in danger of taking shortcuts with foreign money to achieve the optics that they feel look beautiful and respectable instead of taking the longer and less impressive road to true spiritual growth. It’s not uncommon to have a local believer shoot an idea down simply because “it’s not beautiful,” as if no other reason were needed. It’s not hard to imagine then how this sort of posture interacts with something good but difficult like a church discipline process.

What a grace, then, that there is a local proverb that is self-aware enough to call out this deep weakness in the culture – and one that can link so easily to biblical truths that remind us that beauty is deceptive and vain, but the fear of the Lord leads to true honor (Prov 31:30). 

This summer, we are looking to raise 20k, half for our family’s support needs and half for the cost of writing, translating, and printing solid resources for local believers. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

Was the Multiplication of the Early Church a Miraculous Movement?

Most Christians today believe a narrative that goes something like this: The Early Church, full as it was of Holy Spirit power and apostolic witness, quickly saturated the Roman Empire through a miraculous exponential multiplication of believers and churches. This is supposed to explain how you eventually get an emperor like Constantine, who, a mere 300 years after the beginning of Christianity, sees the writing on the wall, embraces Christianity and makes it legal.

In keeping with this view, many missionaries today feel that to return to true, Early Church missions and church planting, we should also be aiming for exponential multiplication in terms that can only be described as miraculous. Faithful missions should look like the early church and the early church saw miraculous multiplication; ergo, we should also be seeing miraculous multiplication if we are truly ministering like the Early Church.

When missionaries have compared the rate of multiplication in traditional proclamation-centered, church-planting missions to the supposed rate of multiplication in the Early Church, many have come to the conclusion that the way we have been doing missions is all wrong. The fruit doesn’t seem to match what we’re supposed to see, what the Early Church saw, so there must be something fundamentally wrong with our methods and approach. This historical assumption (often paired with conversion rates compared negatively to population rates) is one reason why we’ve seen such radical attempts to rework missions into methodologies of rapid multiplication such as CPM, DMM, 4 Fields, POP, T4T, Insider Movement, etc.

But what if this historical narrative is wrong? What if what we find in the early Christian movement is instead a modest but steady rate of growth that leads to exponential gains over a long period of time?

Twenty years ago, as a college freshman, I read a book called The Rise of Christianity, by the sociologist Rodney Stark. A recent discussion with some others in Caravan City about DMM (disciple-making movements) reminded me once again about this book. It came to mind because the surprising thing that Stark claims and demonstrates is that Christianity conquered the Roman Empire, not through some kind of miraculous growth rate – but by a steady annual 3.5% growth rate that simply compounded over time.

What does this looks like? Brace yourself: A hundred Christians in Ephesus in a given year adding three or four more to their number the following year.

If Stark’s claims are true, then the early church grew not like someone suddenly winning the lottery, but rather much more like the steady as she goes compounding interest of your retirement account. Not like the explosive spread of a virus, but much more like a single tree that, given enough time, seeds a forest that covers a mountain range. Check out this chart below to see where a 3.5% annual growth gets you in 300 years.

Notice also what happens by the year 350, when the emperor-sanctioned religion is suddenly flooded with all kinds of Romans wanting to become Christians for all kinds of mixed motives. Up until the year 313, Christianity was illegal, marginalized, and sometimes persecuted, so those years are a better gauge of how Christianity grows through genuine new-birth conversion, rather than the Christianity as path to power or prestige growth that took place in the latter 300s.

It seems that missiologists may be despising the slow growth they see in our age without warrant, and based on a faulty understanding of church history. The issue is not that the timeless methods of evangelism, discipleship, church-planting, preaching, and building networks of healthy churches and Christian institutions are too slow. No, the issue is that the missiologists’ window of reference is too small. Rather than looking at the three decades of missionary labor that have taken place in our corner of Central Asia, for example, and claiming that it’s been an abject failure (“And so we need to rethink what the Great Commission actually means!”), they should be asking if the rate of growth represents a steady increase that could, given 300 years, look like that of the Early Church.

How might a 3.5% growth goal and 300-year perspective change how we think about the alleged hard soil of our ministry contexts? At least for our context, we suddenly seem to be ahead of the curve.

We may be wrong in our assumptions about the rate of growth in the Early Church. But we have not been wrong in believing that the growth was indeed miraculous. The preaching of the gospel across new geographic, linguistic, and ethnic barriers is a mighty thing. The new birth is always a stunning miracle. The planting of a new church is always impossible without the power of the Holy Spirit. The story of Christianity’s rise is truly an amazing one. As usual, it seems we have somewhat wrongheaded ideas about what is actually miraculous or supernatural.

Are there periods of history where the spread of the gospel was way faster than 3.5%? Of course. And it’s not wrong to look at them and pray to see a similar kind of awakening in our day. But let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking that true, apostolic Christianity always spreads like wildfire. It doesn’t. It more often spreads like a mustard seed, like a tree. Just like it did for the Early Church.

This summer, we are looking to raise 20k, half for our family’s support needs and half for the cost of writing, translating, and printing solid resources for local believers. Would you consider supporting the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

Ees Not for You!

Sometime in the middle of our first term, my wife and I went on a much-needed lunch date. Our neighborhood was built on a long hill, at the tallest end of which was a nice hotel. We decided that it would be nice to check out the hotel restaurant and see if it would be the kind of place both close enough and pleasant enough to become a regular date spot.

Like many of the nice hotels in Poet City, the restaurant was on one of the highest floors so that guests and patrons could enjoy the views of the surrounding mountains. We took the elevator up and entered the bright dining space. As we sat down, things were looking hopeful for a refreshing lunch date together.

At the time, we had a couple of energetic toddlers and we were in the thick of full-time language learning. Both my wife and I were laboring hard to build evangelistic relationships with locals and to also invest in the few scattered local believers that were around. I was working as an English teacher and taking seminary classes online. Our team was often engaged in conflict related to personality clashes as well as the sort of arguments a team easily falls into when the ministry is mostly hypothetical and there’s little actual church planting work yet to ground the discussions in reality. Electricity and water supply were also quite bad.

All of this meant I was really hoping this rare chance to go on a date would be a life-giving time for my wife. I was, by this point, waking up to the reality that it is exponentially more difficult to be a female missionary in Central Asia than to be a male missionary like me. I could see my wife slowly wilting under all the pressure.

Now, there are many things I appreciate about honor-shame, hierarchical cultures like that of our locals. But of course, there are also downsides. One of these downsides is an unfortunate bent toward the stuffy and pretentious in certain kinds of establishments. Picture old world class snobbery and you’ll get a sense of what I mean here. Often, it’s not even the VIPs themselves who act this way, but those who work for them. If you don’t send the right signals through your car or clothing or reputation or otherwise, it’s not uncommon to have receptionists, waiters, or others in contexts like this treating you with a sort of high-nosed stiffery that feels demeaning no matter what your cultural background. But it’s even more jarring in our context because it’s so different from the many daily honorable interactions with Central Asian neighbors or shop owners or even gas canister men. When the stranger on the street giving you directions refers to you as “Dearest older brother” and invites you on the spot to join his family for a meal, it makes you wonder what kind of radical code-switch has taken place such that the Central Asian staff in certain establishments are instead channeling Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Sometimes we experience this sort of treatment because my wife and I have dark enough hair and complexion that we can get mistaken for locals. We know that if we drop the fact that we’re actually Americans we would be quickly promoted to the VIP class treatment and everyone would scramble to be on their most honorable behavior. But occasionally it can be useful to hold that info close to our chest for a while, even if it’s just to see how our local friends get treated in these sorts of environments – or to simply quietly protest the silly partiality on display.

We must have looked like locals that day because when we came in the restaurant and sat down, we received no special attention. In fact, we received almost no attention at all. Even though the restaurant was largely empty, we sat for quite some time at our table, ignored by the wait staff. Eventually, we figured it must be up to us to initiate the service. We tried to catch the eye of the several staff stiffly standing or bustling around, but to no avail. But we did notice a lunch buffet table over on the far side of the room. Maybe we had misunderstood the lunch system here and it was a self-serve buffet?

My wife got up to go and inspect the table. And this, finally, got one of the waiters moving. He scurried across the room, not to assist my wife, but to tsk her.

“T-t-t-t-t,” he tongue clicked at her, wagging his finger and furrowing his brow. “Ees not forr you!“

My wife stopped in her tracks, eyebrows raised at this unexpected scolding.

“Okay,” she responded, “Well, do you have a menu then?”

The waiter exhaled loudly, seeming to be very inconvenienced by this burdensome request. And motioned for her to have a seat again.

She sat back down and we made faces at each other, sharing in the surprise and the absurdity of it all. I was reminded of my wife’s opinion that everyone who goes into ministry should first spend some time in food service, not only to learn to patiently bear with others who are treating you poorly, but also to reveal if you are able to humbly and consistently treat others well, even in a stressful environment. Let us hope that our waiter had no pretensions of someday entering the pastorate.

When my wife pointed out something on the menu that looked promising, I siezed my opportunity to lean across the table with great self-import, and whisper,

“T-t-t, Ees not forr you!“

She gave me an unamused look over her menu, but then cracked a smile. By the time we had left that restaurant we had tsked and scolded each other several times in the style of our friendly waiter, and a new inside quote was thereby added to our family’s collection. To this day, you might catch us using it in situations where we need to playfully shoot something down or to make light of some request that’s been denied by others.

We never went back to that restaurant. It was, after all, the kind of place that seemed like they really didn’t want customers. For my part, I also remembered that in a season when my wife was in need of kindness and rest, she had been treated somewhat disrespectfully there. That doesn’t make a husband want to take his wife back there for a date.

It was almost a decade later when I learned that that same hotel and restaurant, of all places, had been ground zero for an all-night firefight, and blown to smithereens. See, Poet City is largely controlled by one political party that is itself controlled by one ruling family – sort of a tribe/mafia/militia/one-party fusion, as it were. The patriarch of this family died some years ago, which means his various sons and nephews have been jockeying for power ever since, and the whole patronage network of alliances has been re-shuffling. The nephew the patriarch had put in charge of the elite counter-terrorism forces owned the hotel where we had gone on our date. But a few years ago, he’d had a falling out with one of the patriarch’s sons, and had been confined to house arrest in his mansion on top of the hill, right next to the hotel. 

For several years, things stayed calm. The nephew and his loyal armed forces stayed confined to the top of the hill, while his cousin gradually consolidated power around himself. Then, suddenly, the son launched an all out assault late one night, with tanks and RPGs and small arms fire pounding the hotel where the nephew’s forces were mounting a desperate defense.

Friends of ours living nearby told us they were awakened in the middle of the night by what sounded like an all-out war. Not surprisingly, the son’s forces shot that hotel to pieces, and eventually the nephew and his soldiers surrendered.

News of this reached us in Caravan City the next day. I was talking about it with a teammate when my wife overheard us.

“Wait, isn’t that the hotel in our old neighborhood?”

“Yep, the one just a short walk from where we lived. It’s where went for that lunch date. You remember, Ees not forr you!“

My wife’s jaw dropped. “They blew up the Ees not forr you place?”

“They sure did. Apparently the whole building is shot to pieces with bullet holes and craters from tank shells.”

We were quiet for a moment as we took it all in. Our corner of Central Asia can seem so safe and stable. Then, all of the sudden, somebody’s blowing up their cousin’s hotel right in the middle of a well-to-do residential neighborhood.

“You know,” I said to our teammate. “I believe the justice of God is a perfect, detailed, and mysterious thing. Years ago, we went on a date to that hotel. And they were quite rude to my wife in a season where she was working so hard to be faithful amidst all kinds of hardships… I would not put it beyond God to factor even those small slights against his daughter into what happened to that hotel. ‘You’re going to treat my daughter that way? Tsk at her like that??? Well, I’ve taken note of that, and it will be accounted for.'”

My teammate and my wife looked at me somewhat incredulously.

“What?” I said, “Until we get to eternity, we simply don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a couple of those bullets or tank shells were direct recompense for their conduct to her that day. You guys remember what happened to the Afghan monarchy because they destroyed that church building, right?”

They still didn’t look convinced.

Of course, there’s no way of knowing on this side of eternity. And often God’s justice is postponed until a much later date. But I am convinced that, every once in a while, if you are unusually rude to one of God’s beloved daughters, one of his ambassadors, he just may allow your hotel and restaurant to get blown to smithereens.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

Baptism and Welcome Songs by Local Believers

Last night we had a baptism. The brother I mentioned last week who came to faith somewhere in the middle of the book Matthew went under the water (in the somewhat-scary metal trough we’ve been using). Despite the nerves and a potential slip in the Trinitarian proclamation on the part of the new local elder, the immersed man also came back up again – surrounded by the hugs, applause, and singing of a room full of celebrating saints.

My wife and I and two local believers led worship during the service. These two local believers, the single former guerrilla fighter gal and the divorced poet/prankster dad, are both growing in their abilities as singers and as songwriters. That being the case, I wanted to share with you the translation of a couple of the songs they’ve written that are fast becoming staples of our local language worship.

Even in English, we don’t have a lot of good songs about baptism. A year or so ago, we realized that when it came to our local language, we had none at all. So, we asked this local brother if he would consider writing one. I sent him a collection of key verses that talk about the meaning and significance of baptism. And I asked him to write a song that would feel very local and singable on a baptism picnic with no guitar and only a bunch of believers clapping by the side of a river. He got to work on it, crafting a solid song with traditional rhyming couplets. We then worked on it a little more to make the theology present in the song just a little more robust. In the end, this is the very Central Asian song that was created. 

Arise O sisters and brothers, make respectful clapping
Today we have a celebration, for the sake of baptism!

Now arise and look, everyone prepare yourselves
He that is baptized, congratulate him!

Let all sing, give clapping with humility
Another person has been redeemed, by the blood of Christ!

As a sign of burial, we submerge him in the water
And a sign of new life, we bring him out again!

Through faith and water we are members of one another
Before we were estranged, now we are one in Christ!

Arise O sisters and brother, make a respectful clapping
Today we have a celebration, for the sake of baptism!

The melody of this song is quite celebratory and fun to sing either A Capella with just clapping or with guitar. Someday when we have more believing musicians here in Caravan City it will be really fun to sing it with a full band playing local instruments. I appreciate how the song is congregational, calling the church to respond rightly to this glorious act of obedience to Jesus. I also love how the song balances both the spirit of celebration while also teaching core truths about baptism. It’s a good example to me of how foreign and local believers can work together to craft something that could serve the church well for a long time to come.

More recently, the pastor of this church asked us to help create a good welcome song for the beginning of the service. The only one we had in the local language wasn’t so good, one of those odd evangelical songs that’s all about welcoming the Holy Spirit “into this place, into your gathering.” Because we’re not confident that we really should be focused on ‘welcoming the Spirit’ like this (does he not sovereignly create and indwell and fill the church?), we don’t really sing it and were more than happy to see if a better one could be written.

We followed a similar process to the one above, asking the single gal who does vocals with us most weeks if she would consider writing it. We knew that she had been writing a lot of songs on her own, but most of these were first-person devotional-style songs, not necessarily congregational “we” songs that teach and exult in truths from God’s word. It’s curious how this particular weakness of global worship music has somehow seeped into the first generation of believers here as well. Not that first-person, devotional-style songs are unhelpful in the proper context. But that context is not usually the gathering of the local church.

After sending her a number of key passages on the biblical theme of welcome, this is what she wrote. 

Where Christ is there is peace
For the weary and heavy laden
His yoke is easy, his burden light
Rest for mind and soul

Chorus:
We come with open heart
We welcome one another
We come humbly and rejoicing
God has welcomed us 

Sinners are welcomed 
In the presence of God our father
The heart is calmed in our Lord's presence
Christ has become our sacrifice 

Chorus:
We come with open heart
We welcome one another
We come humbly and rejoicing
God has welcomed us 

Children and elderly, rich and poor
All are called, let them come 
The mercy of God has made the way
Let all come, the door is open 

Chorus:
We come with open heart
We welcome one another
We come humbly and rejoicing
God has welcomed us

We ended up changing very little of the content since she had done such a good job of weaving in truths from multiple passages of scripture. But a group of us did work together to come up with the melody together. In the end, what’s resulted is a joyful and rich song of welcome for the local church. The melody is more of a fusion of Central Asian and Western styles compared to baptism song, but still close enough, we hope, to get long-term traction among the believers here.

This season has involved more opportunities to invest in local worship than we had anticipated. What a joy it’s been to be a part of the creation of good songs for the local church. Long-term, our hope is to see many new songs that are robustly biblical, delightfully singable, and deeply Central Asian, songs that teach, exult, and call believers to respond in faithfulness.

Although I must say, this kind of work is a bit addictive. Once you realize you can plug needed gaps in the worship of another language, you start looking at your own language and wondering why there is such a paucity of songs on certain topics.

Speaking of these gaps, why don’t we have good baptism songs in English? Somebody needs to get on that. The next time we’re in the US and a newly believing friend goes under the water, I want to be able to exult in song about what is happening!

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

A Central Asian Church’s Treasures

Were you to accompany me to the Central Asian church where my wife and I help lead worship, to sit with us in our usual row, and to look around you, this is what you would see. 

Up at the front, the young local elder is leading the introduction to communion. He’s doing a good job explaining the meaning of the Lord’s Supper and who should or should not partake. He smiles as he unpacks all this, but he’s got dark circles under his eyes. He’s grieving the loss of a relationship with a believing gal in Poet City whom he had been close to marrying. He’s having a lot of trouble sleeping because of this, crashing at other believers’ places several times a week to try and find some relief. As the only believer in an unbelieving and unhealthy family, home is understandably not the most restful place nor the best place to get counsel when struggling (single men here continue to live at home until married). 

Just in front of us, on the right, is another young single brother. He’s a tall, awkward 20-year-old whom the members of the church love dearly in spite of his cage-stage Calvinism (fueled by his line-by-line reading of The Institutes through Google Translate). This young man is a voracious reader and aspiring writer. But he’s been wearing hoods and hats to church for a month or so now, ever since his dad blew up at him again because of his faith and shaved off part of his hair, an action taken only when someone has deeply shamed the family. He’s waiting for it to grow back and trying not to mention it.

In front of him is a single American brother, one of our teammates, manning the PowerPoint. After getting a brain tumor and miraculously surviving, he decided he’d like to spend the rest of his days on the mission field. Language learning doesn’t come easy to him after brain cancer, but he’s exemplary in his diligence, and he shares the gospel with as many taxi drivers as he can. He’s one of our kids’ favorite grown ups around for many reasons, including that he likes to show them funny clips of The Lord of the Rings dubbed into our local language. Central Asian Gandalf at the bridge of Khazad-Dum is fast becoming one of our family’s inside quotes.

At the front on the left, sits another elder and his family, dear American friends of ours and the ones who planted this church over the last several years. We got to be a part of some of the earliest (unsuccessful) attempts to gather living room groups with them back pre-Covid, and it’s been such a joy to move back to Caravan City and to see how their faithful perseverance has led to the birth of a new, healthy local church – the first open and healthy local language church in this large city. These friends are not flashy, but humble, gifted, steady plodders, the kind of people willing to gently but stubbornly follow the Bible and call local believers to do the same. Six years ago, their church planting plans were dismissed by others in the city as neither contextual nor realistic. Now, the church they’ve planted is becoming an example to the missionary community of how church planting can actually work in the hard soil of Caravan City.

Behind us is a short, middle-aged woman, one of a number of members who are political refugees from the country next door. She’s a faithful and kind church member, but she’s often struggled to find enough work. She was helping with childcare for some of the expat families in Caravan City, but most of them left during the war, meaning much of her income has since dried up. She and the others in her situation can end up stuck in our region indefinitely, sometimes for decades. They’re not fully legal, not able to go back home, and not able to travel on to another country. They often struggle with hopelessness as they consider their future. 

Behind her sit a greying middle-aged couple, some of the very first attendees of this church back when it was just a little group meeting in a living room. They are kind and dependable church members, and every week she prepares the delicious food that the church shares together after the service. But it’s been a hard year for their marriage. Their fights at home got so bad that it led their college-aged son, also a believer, to attempt suicide. Since then, and with much counsel, they seem to be doing better. As refugees themselves, finances have also been really tight given how the war has damaged the local economy. 

Near them sits a young man from Caravan City who came to faith last year, joined the church, then quickly went and married a Muslim girl. This was in part because of family pressure, but also a choice made against pastoral counsel. In spite of the great danger of this course of action, it seems that God has been merciful to him and granted him true repentance. His unbelieving wife now regularly attends the services with him and even desires to help out the church as she can. She is a genuine friend now to some of the other believing ladies, who hope that she will also come to saving faith. Her husband, quietly a poet at heart, often pulls me aside to share a new local proverb. He’ll also ask good questions about how to grow as a husband or evangelist, seeming to have a genuine desire to grow in real spiritual wisdom. I am also grateful for him as one of the few who can actually clap on beat.

Across the aisle from them sits a local brother in his late 30s, from a city a couple of hours away up in the mountains. He will tell you that he was a bad husband and father before believing, and that his apostasy from Islam to follow Jesus was the last straw for his wife. She and their kids separated from him, remaining in their native city while he moved to Caravan City for work. He’s worked a succession of hard jobs, such as driving a gas canister exchange truck on 18-hour shifts. Thus far, his wife has been unwilling to reconcile, even though she can see that he’s now genuinely changed in some significant ways. In spite of the constant grief of missing his family, this brother is also one of the church’s most mischievous members, regularly dropping witty remarks and engaging in good-hearted teasing. Even though we’re the same age, he loves to point out how many gray hairs are now salting my chin and head and how that means he’ll have to soon start calling me “uncle dear.” He’s also a gifted poet, composing line after line in his head and recording them on his phone as he drives around the city. He and the young Calvinist have become fast friends. Together with the brother who likes proverbs, they are shaping up to be a formidable evangelistic trio (in between the constant jokes about ‘Jan Kalveen’).

Near him is a young, quiet man with a short beard and glasses. He’s a new believer who came to faith in part because of a guy’s discussion night we were hosting in our apartment until the war started. A jaded, post-Islamic, post-Christian Jungian psychiatrist was a regular at the group. In spite of his dismissal of the gospel as merely one manifestation of the collective subconscious, he said he had a depressed patient who might be really helped by Christianity. He invited this struggling man to the group, where he heard the gospel from the trio mentioned above and others of us, accepting the invitation to come to church. Now, this quiet, bespectacled friend has been born again and is being discipled by the local elder.

In front of him sits a prospective member. He’s recently shared his testimony with the church, hoping they’ll accept his profession of faith in Jesus and welcome him into membership. His story echoed many others I’ve heard over the years, since it included a dream about Jesus, one that stood out from his other dreams so much so that he couldn’t seem to forget it for years afterward. That dream eventually led him to a Bible, and he came to faith somewhere in the middle of the book of Matthew, again, similar to many of my other local friends’ testimonies. 

Near him sit two more prospective members, a married couple. The husband had been a guerrilla fighter from the time he was a boy, and heard the gospel this from past year from our old friend, Frank*. Because of the terrible things he had seen and done, and the resultant PTSD, this man was terrified of sharing his testimony with the church, and his membership was stalled for a while. But he did so just this past week, speaking of the things he’d seen in careful, general terms, but speaking of the hope of the gospel in gloriously clear detail. He had told me beforehand that he was terrified of sharing the kind of things that would send his mind spiraling back into the darkness, from which he might not be able to come back. But Jesus gave him and his wife strength to testify, and they will soon be baptized, along with the brother who had the dream.

At the back stands the local deacon, another former guerrilla fighter now turned gentle servant of Christ. His two believing adult children are also members. His son helps with the soundboard every week and is a language helper for some of our teammates. His daughter, also a former soldier, joins us as a vocalist for the worship team most weeks, helps write new songs, and serves as the local language teacher at our kids’ TCK school. She was the first one to come to faith in the family, after her dad randomly found a Bible on the ground in the bazaar and gave it to her. Then, one by one, she prayed and led her dad and brother to faith as well.

She sits with her arm around another single gal who’s a believing member. Her father was a diplomat, so she grew up in multiple foreign countries before her family returned to the homeland. Her dad isn’t a serious Muslim, so he let her pursue this Jesus thing, believing it to be only a phase. But now that he understands it to be a long-term, serious conversion, he and her brothers have taken to regularly mocking her. Her mom takes a different approach. Whenever this young woman gets out her Bible to do her devotions at the kitchen table, her mom conspicuously gets out her Quran and starts studying as well – even mimicking her daughter’s highlighting of her holy book, even though good Muslims should never highlight or write notes in the Quran! With this kind of home environment, you can understand why she is visibly soaking up the chance to be around other believers.

With that, plus a few more foreigners and some local visitors, our scan of the room is complete. 

What would you make of this body of believers were you to see it in person like this? It’s mostly made up of messy, first-generation, young Christians. There are layers and layers of trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and dark, broken pasts. Most don’t have enough work. Many need to take a smoke break outside before and after the service, including the deacon. Most are not well-connected or well-educated or initially that impressive. All are fighting stubborn sins which occasionally (and publicly) blow up on the other believers – and that while living in a society that might turn on them at any second.

Would this motley crew of believers be the ones you would choose to turn Caravan City upside down? Are these the kind of strategic leaders who, as the members of the first healthy church, will lead to the inbreaking of the kingdom? 

Let’s remember what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:

26) Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27) But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28) God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29) so that no one may boast before him. 30) It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31) Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Yes, my hope is that were you to visit this church with me, you would, as Paul writes of the messy Corinthians, see the very wisdom of God. Indeed, that you would perceive that you are seeing the very treasures of God and of the church, as an early church deacon in Rome, Lorenzo, once put it.

Every once in a while, I remember a conversation I had years ago in a Louisville coffee shop with a veteran missionary. He lamented how we’d never be successful church planters in Muslim contexts if we kept gathering “the freaks and the rejects, the nobodies.” I remember this statement, and I shake my head. The nature of the kingdom is so very different from what the missiologists assume will be effective or strategic. Yes, God sometimes saves the chiefs, the rich, the influential, those who have it together (in a worldly sense anyway). But so often his delight is to save and use the unexpected, the overlooked, those with dark pasts and a struggling present, those rejected by their families. Even the mischievous and poetic delivery drivers who are quietly grieving, and the former guerrilla fighters who still very much need to take that smoke break. 

Yes, were we to scan the room, we would see their rough pasts and their still somewhat rough present. 

But what of their future? Their future is that they will become more glorious than even the angels, that they will be the ruling and shining heirs of the resurrection. That is true of each of these believers I’ve described to you here. It is, for those who have eyes to see, what we could see in any true local church.

The foolish shaming the wise. The weak shaming the strong. The treasures of the kingdom. 

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

Photo from Unsplash

A Note to My Email Subscribers

Hi friends,

I just noticed (thanks to my wife!) that several of the block quotes included in my last post (“The Glory of the Impossible…”) were cut off without including the full quote in certain email providers. If you read the post and the logic between the quotes and the following paragraphs didn’t quite make sense, this is why. I don’t know how long this has been going on, but it seems to be an issue with how certain email providers struggle to process the block quote function I’ve been using. Going forward, I’ll be writing longer quotes differently to avoid this issue. However, I do want to apologize if it’s been a while that this has been happening and certain posts are coming across not quite coherent! No, it’s not the effect of the recent war on my brain’s grey matter. It’s just a glitch in the software.

In the meantime, you can read the full post here.

I’m thankful for each of you. Last week sometime I passed 500,000 all-time views on this blog. Who could have guessed so many would be interested to read this content. Praise God for his kindness and for your continued support as readers.

In Him,

A.W. Workman