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 thick in the midst 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 owner 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.ย 

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 cousin 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 youย 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 canย give hereย through the blog orย contact meย to find out how to give through our organization.ย 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kidsโ€™ 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 Iโ€™ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts Iโ€™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 kidsโ€™ 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 Iโ€™ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts Iโ€™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.ย 

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).ย 

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 ofย Theย Institutesย 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 ofย The Lord of the Ringsย 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.ย 

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.ย 

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.ย 

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 shouldย neverย 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.ย 

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?ย 

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 thingsโ€”and the things that are notโ€”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 Godโ€”that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31) Therefore, as it is written: โ€œLet the one who boasts boast in the Lord.โ€

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.ย 

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

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.ย 

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 canย give hereย through the blog orย contact meย to find out how to give through our organization.ย 

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

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

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

Photo fromย 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

The Glory of the Impossible and Sending False Dichotomies to Hell

False dichotomies are foolish, dangerous, deceptive things. Believers fall into their trap when they overreact to the emphases and excesses of a different camp or previous generation. Ironically, these pendulum-riding believers often themselves go on to become the inverse example of the very thing they are critiquing.ย 

Instead of this, the way of wisdom is to give both sides their biblical proper weight, to thread the needle right, even if that means we often must hold complex, nuanced positions, right alongside our bold, black and white hills to die on. To do this well, a deep knowledge of the Bible and church history is invaluable, as well as deep insight into our current culture, context, and age.ย 

Alas, the relationship of the Church to global missions is full of these false dichotomies. One of these days, I’ll write a post exploring which of them seem especially prominent in our circles. For now, I just want to highlight one way in which the pendulum is once again acting like a wrecking ball and out there smashing things up once again.

Here’s D.A. Carson reemphasizing for us just how harmful these false dichotomies are:

โ€œSo which shall we choose? โ€œExperience or truth? The left wing of the airplane, or the right? Love or integrity? Study or service? Evangelism or discipleship? The front wheels of a car, or the rear? Subjective knowledge or objective knowledge? Faith or obedience? Damn all false antithesis to hell, for they generate false gods, they perpetuate idols, they twist and distort our souls, they launch the church into violent pendulum swings whose oscillations succeed only in dividing brothers and sisters in Christโ€

Indeed. Send all false dichotomies to hell, where they belong, including a particular false dichotomy currently gaining steam that pits biblical localism against biblical missions.ย 

Biblical localism could be defined as the idea that God calls the majority of believers to put down roots, to build families, to work faithfully, to live a quiet life, to serve their local churches faithfully, and to seek to leaven their communities and broader society with the light of God’s word. This is a good, hard, biblical lifestyle (1 Thes 4:11-12, Eph 4:28).ย 

Biblical missions could be defined as the idea that God calls the Church to send a minority of believers to leave their home communities in order to take the gospel across geographic, political, cultural, and linguistic barriers in order to plant churches – churches that then go on to practice both faithful localism and faithful missions. This too is a good, hard, biblical lifestyle (Matt 28:18-20, Rom 15:20).ย 

These ideas go hand-in-hand in the scriptures. They are not against one another. Rather, they uniquely sharpen and empower one another. The goers need the stayers, and the stayers need the goers. Both have a unique role in spreading the gospel in this age and pointing forward to the resurrection coming in the next. Both are taking ground and fighting the Church’s battles against her ever-present enemies, even though the dynamics on the front lines will vary from place to place.ย 

But here’s what’s happened. My generation, the Millennials, went out to save the world. With the not-so-good confidence fostered by all the “You’re a unicorn who can do anything you set your mind to!” messaging we ingested growing up, alongside the good gospel fire in our bones stoked by Piper’sย Don’t Waste Your Life, Platt’sย Radical, and the missionary biographies of Paton, Judson, Taylor, and Eliot, we answered the call and laid it all on the line.ย 

Not surprisingly, a lot of us burned out – and that was a full decade before the previous generation had. If Gen X was hitting burnout in their forties, it came for us in our early to mid-thirties, or even earlier. Perhaps it was the young and restless part of being young, restless, and reformed that meant many of us didn’t prioritize rest, health, and sustainable sacrifice the way we should have. Yes, some of the costs we incurred were simply part of the deal, the normal and even noble suffering that comes from the Christian life in general and some unique trials of the missionary life in particular. But many of the costs were undoubtedly also due to our own lack of wisdom in things like Sabbath, embodiment, community, and the fact that the kids are not the unflappably flexible and resilient little beings we had been told they were.ย 

When we look back at the missions emphasis of recent decades, a lot of good work was done. We need to be honest about that fact. But the reality of many young families returning from the mission field quite broken also coincided with big shifts in the American/Western zeitgeist, specifically, the rise of things like therapy culture, Gen Z, Christian nationalism, Christian localism, massive inflation and wage stagnation, and the foundering of the New Calvinism’s unity on the rocks of Trump, Covid-19, BLM, and ‘woke’ vs. ‘based’ everything.ย 

Early on, all this led to some healthy pushback, which included books likeย Resetย andย Refreshย by David and Shona Murray andย Ordinaryย by Michael Horton. Much of this pushback was good and helpful. It reminded the Church that we needed to get more biblical in prioritizing rest and sustainability, and in also celebrating the radical nature of Christians who stay and invest in their local church and community for decades on end. Praise God for wise men and women who help to balance the pendulum.ย 

But I’ve noticed something shifting in the last couple of years. Reformed evangelical leaders who have been convinced by robust and uber-confident ‘happy warrior’ forms of Christian localism are also beginning to turn against global missions. Here are a couple of quotes that surfaced in recent months on my social media feeds that illustrate this. I post them here simply to illustrate. I admit I’m not familiar with the broader body of these men’s work, so they may nuance these statements elsewhere. Both are SBTS grads who speak at conferences, and we share a lot of mutual friends, so I would hope they are more balanced than they appear here. However, notice how they are drawing a stark dichotomy between foreign missions and localism – and how different this kind of talk sounds from what has been the evangelical church’s posture since the late 1700s.ย 

There needs to be a new and more biblically faithful version of “Don’t Waste Your Life” for the next generation.

I know many Christians who were afraid of wasting their lives and ended up chasing glory in foreign countries. But they screwed up their marriages and kids as a result. That’s actually wasting your life.

The updated version we now need is to call people to do something truly radical. Live an ordinary, faithful life of Christian service. Get married, start a family, have lots of children, work with your hands, plug into a local community, and serve a local church.

-Michael Clary on X

Notice the claims made here.ย 1) The book, Don’t Waste Your Life, was unbiblical, period.ย No mention of its context, intended audience, or what it got right. Suburban baby boomer retirement mindset, anyone?ย 2) Those who went overseas were only chasing glory.ย Is there no longer a biblical category of holy ambition that applies to taking great risks like this for the sake of the unreached, or does holy ambition only apply to those who stay and build? To say that it’s wrong to seek glory is to be out of step with both the Bible and the historic church (Rom 2:7). It’sย howย you seek glory that matters.ย 3) The costs to marriages and kids mean you’re the one who wasted your life.ย But what about the costs to families that come simply as part of faithful service? Is there no category for that in your theology? Or does tragic cost always equal unfaithfulness?ย 4) What is truly radical is marriage, kids, work, community investment, and long-term local church service.ย I guess Jesus, Paul, Patrick, Lull, and Paton weren’t good examples of Christian radicals?ย 

Here’s a response to the above post, but taking it even further:

Imagine disguising adventurism and avoidance of duty as the ideal, super spiritual thing. That is a great deal of the last few generations of evangelicalism in America and what was sold to young men and women. And we wonder why so few are married and have children.

Going to a foreign country (at other’s expense no less) – wow, you are so spiritual. You will get special services and a Sunday a month where we extol you and folks will especially pray for you… Working hard to take on a wife and have a large family and be productive and fruitful where you are and start a business that employs folks in your church? Oh, meh… unless we want more of your money.

Adopt kids from far flung nations? We will write entire books and have conferences about it… special services and recognition. Care for your actual neighbors and help their kids? Meh… yawn.

The problem? It’s been primarily rot and rubbish for a hundred years. Promoted primarily by people who don’t practice at all what they preach. I despise it so much at this point and the poison it is and has been to our nation and communities.

-John Moody on FB

This post claimsย 1) Missions is adventurism and avoidance of duty, and is the reason so few are having children. Is there no category for holy ambition or the faithful fulfilment of the Great Commission as the duty of the Christian? What about the fact that evangelical missionaries have far more children on average than evangelicals who stay planted in the West?ย 2) Going to a foreign country at others’ expense does not warrant special recognition or prayer. Those things should be for those who stay and build. Wait, must we choose one or the other? Who says so? What about 3rd John 1:6?ย 3) Missions has been promoted by those who don’t practice what they preach, and it is essentially poison to the American and evangelical community.ย I recognize the brother here is probably speaking from emotion, so, in turn, I would invite him to visit the graves of countless faithful missionaries scattered all over the world, including that of my own father in Melanesia and that of a good friend here in Central Asia. Would you say they didn’t practice what they preached when they were faithful unto death? How about their families that continue to grieve and trust God with their deaths? Are their examples of dying for Jesus poison for the American church?ย 

Here’s the thing. Both of these men I’ve quoted are truly onto something. There has been an underemphasis on faithful Christian localism in recent decades. And a lot of young evangelical families have come back broken from the mission field. Both of these things have been tremendously costly. We need to hear these points loud and clear.ย 

But we need to do so while avoiding the error they’re falling into – pitting localism against missions. To fall into this trap is to be captive by a spirit of the age that hasn’t been very prominent in about 300 years, but which seems to be staging an aggressive comeback. That wrongheaded spirit misses the fundamental point that missions exists in part becauseย there can be no Christian localism in places where there are not yet any Christians.

One of the reasons people like me do what we do is because we dream of the day when our unreached people groups are filled with healthy churches that are transforming their society from the inside out. We long to see churches filled to the brim with faithful local Christians who settle down, get married, have kids, start businesses, influence their neighbors and government, and yes, support their own missionaries who go on to expand the kingdom across new frontiers.ย 

Further, we live every day knowing that our family can only do what we do because there are a hundred faithful families who sacrifice by staying. That is an honor and a duty that we do not take lightly. But this is the way the kingdom has always worked, and it is what it will take to see faithful Christian localism expressed in every corner of the earth. We risk, we suffer, we accept this glorious and frustrating nomadic lifestyle for the sake of those who will one day be able to put down roots. If our families are broken in the pursuit of that vision, then weep with us, help us get wiser, and help us untangle which parts of our suffering were wrongheaded and which parts were noble and good and honor Jesus.ย 

But don’t so rashly throw out the very thing that has made your calls to Christian localism possible in the first place. After all, if not for the radical, adventurous missionaries of the past, there would be no Christian West to try to save or recover. As our Central Asian locals say, “Don’t cast stones into the spring from which you drink.” A little bit of historic self-awareness would serve the new Christian localists well.ย Pioneer missionaries are, in fact, those who take the beachheads that one day lead to the establishment of a healthy Christian localism in those contexts.

Friends, the pendulum is swinging hard. The conversation is shifting. And many are in danger of drifting away from the biblical emphasis on missions, risk, and losing everything for the sake of the gospel. Many young men no longer desire to become leaders, and many young families and singles coming to the field are so concerned with mental health and work-life balance that they no longer understand the logic of sacrifice. I find myself longing more and more for older, stranger voices, like that of Samuel Zwemer, to wake us back up to some of these historic but out-of-fashion truths. Yes, men like Zwemer were unbalanced in their own ways, but perhaps hearing from them again is actually what we need to respond to these new challenges – and actually thread the needle right.ย 

If you’ve never read Zwemer’s address, The Glory of the Impossible, it’s a stirring challenge from a very different era. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but here is an excerpt as well:

The unoccupied fields, therefore, are a challenge to all whose lives are unoccupied by that which is highest and best; whose lives are occupied only with the weak things or the base things that do not count. There are eyes that have never been illumined by a great vision, minds that have never been gripped by an unselfish thought, hearts that have never thrilled with passion for another’s wrong, and hands that have never grown weary or strong in lifting a great burden. To such the knowledge of these Christless millions in lands yet unoccupied should come like a new call from Macedonia, and a startling vision of God’s will for them. As Bishop Brent remarks, “We never know what measure of moral capacity is at our disposal until we try to express it in action. An adventure of some proportions is not uncommonly all that a young man needs to determine and fix his manhood’s powers.” Is there a more heroic test for the powers of manhood than pioneer work in the mission field? Here is opportunity for those who at home may never find elbow-room for their latent capacities, who may never find adequate scope elsewhere for all the powers of their minds and their souls. There are hundreds of Christian college men who expect to spend life in practicing law or in some trade for a livelihood, yet who have strength and talent enough to enter these unoccupied fields. There are young doctors who might gather around them in some new mission station thousands of those who “suffer the horrors of heathenism and Islam,” and lift their burden of pain, but who now confine their efforts to some “pent-up Utica” where the healing art is subject to the law of competition and is measured too often merely in terms of a cash-book and ledger. They are making a living; they might be making a life.

Bishop Phillips Brooks once threw down the challenge of a big task in these words: “Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.” He could not have chosen words more applicable if he had spoken of the evangelization of the unoccupied fields of the world with all their baffling difficulties and their glorious impossibilities. God can give us power for the task. He was sufficient for those who went out in the past, and is sufficient for those who go out today.

Face to face with these millions in darkness and degradation, knowing the condition of their lives on the unimpeachable testimony of those who have visited these countries, this great unfinished task, this unattempted task, calls today for those who are willing to endure and suffer in accomplishing it.

-Zwemer, The Glory of the Impossible

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 canย give hereย through the blog orย contact meย to find out how to give through our organization.ย 

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

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

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

Photo fromย Unsplash

Jesus Was Called ‘Isa 300 Years Before Islam

A stone inscribed with ancient Safaitic Arabic (and a camel)

Possibly the earliest witness to Christianity in Arabia, the Jesus inscription from the Wadi al-Khudari is a memorial inscription, meaning that it commemorates a deceased person. It consists of three parts: It first gives the inscriberโ€™s name (Wahb-El) and genealogy, then adds a commemoration of his deceased uncle, and finally concludes with a unique religious invocationโ€”to Isay, which corresponds to the name given to Jesus in the Quran: โ€œO ฤชsay (โ€˜sy), help him against those who deny you.โ€ There can be little doubt that the writer (and possibly also his uncle) was Christian.

โ€œThe present text is a typical Safaitic composition, but the old gods and prayers are replaced by a Christian invocation. Wahb-El may therefore have been a convert who modified the Safaitic writing tradition to accommodate his new faith, invoking Jesus with the same formulaic structure used to invoke the old gods.โ€ Regarding the circumstances surrounding the inscription and the rise of Christianity in Arabia, Al-Jallad theorizes, โ€œ[Wahb-El] may have had close contacts with settled areas, such as Bostra in Syria or the cities of the Decapolis in Transjordan, which appear in other Safaitic texts. On the other hand, it is possible that his inscription reflects the efforts of missionaries to convert the nomads.โ€

One crisis that has recently been averted among the churches of our area has to do with the name of Jesus. Our people group, speaking a Persian-related language and overwhelmingly Islamic in their creed in recent centuries, call Jesus by the name he is given in the Quranic Arabic: ‘Isa al-Masih (Jesus the Messiah, localized as ‘Isa-i Mesih).

In previous decades, the Bible translators chose to keep Jesus’ name as ‘Isa in our Bible translation, rather than to defer to the Arabic evangelical preferred form of Yasu’. The reason for this was straightforward. Someone from our people group reading the new Bible in their language would have no idea who Yasu’ was. But they had inherited at least partial categories for ‘Isa the Messiah. While the Jesus of the Quran is not the same as the Jesus of the Bible, by using the same name, the translators discerned that the seekers and local believers from a Muslim background would be less confused and eventually able to redeem the name and fill it with biblical meaning.

In the years since this decision was made, this has indeed proved to be the case. Local believers have had no issues coming to understand who the true Jesus is, even though the name they use for him is close to the same form as Jesus’ name in the Qur’an.

However, the form used for Jesus’ name among Arabic speaking believers is a really big deal. For centuries, they have used Yesu’ and opposed ‘Isa as an inferior Islamic name for Christ, one that some even claim was chosen as a camel-related insult. As the theory goes, the writer of the Quran intentionally chose a different name for his demoted Jesus who was just a mighty prophet, wasn’t the Son of God, and didn’t die on the cross.

Without getting into the merits of this belief, this linguistic differentiation among Arabic-speaking Christians is one still held to very passionately, and likely why someone from that camp began telling believers among our people group that they were compromising by calling Jesus ‘Isa and not Yasu’. Divisions started to emerge among local churches and leaders. Some of those adopting this new position were the usual suspects, local leaders doing ministry for worldly gain who like to find distinctives like this for the sake of demonstrating their ‘superior’ knowledge. But at least one faithful pastor was also getting quite convictional on this issue, a brother whose church partners very closely with the church we helped to plant in Poet City.

Thankfully, a meeting was held among Bible translators and local believers last year where the matter was, at least for now, put to rest. Everyone present agreed that believers and churches in our language group should be free to use either form of Jesus’ name, according to what they think is best for clear teaching and communication. One key to convincing them of the wisdom of this position was new research that demonstrates that ‘Isa is, in fact, an ancient Christian form of Jesus’ name, one that predated Islam. Research by Rick Brown of SIL has demonstrated that ‘Isa is the Arabic form of the ancient East Syriac ‘Isho, while Yasu’ is the form descended from the ancient West Syriac dialect.

This means that ‘Isa was a Christian Arabic name for Jesus before Islam ever came along. While this doesn’t automatically settle the matter for Arabic speaking Christians, for whom their community may never be able nor want to redeem the name of ‘Isa, it is a significant point in favor of the name’s potential for Christian use in other languages. Other languages and people groups simply don’t have the same options, nor the same baggage, for a hard differentiation of Yasu’ over ‘Isa to make sense as a hard rule. In contrast to a name for the all-powerful creator God, these languages don’t tend to have an indigenous name already for Jesus. So, if one ancient borrowed form of Jesus’ name is the one that is more clear, then they should be free to use that form rather than another foreign one not otherwise present in their language. Islamic Arabic has forced other languages into its mold for long enough. The last thing we need is Christian Arabic doing the same thing.

Islam, in a very real sense, stole this particular form of Jesus’ name 1,400 years ago. And while many native Arabic speakers don’t feel right about using it after centuries of gross misuse, for other languages, stealing it back and making it their own is actually pretty easy. English speakers skeptical of this possibility should beware. Our very term for ‘God’ has its own concerning roots in pagan religious usage, more problematic than Allah with it’s El-related semitic roots, and our Germano-English ‘Jesus’ is just as far away from the Greek ‘Iesous or the Hebrew Yeshua as ‘Isa is. In fact, every time we read our Bibles and go to church in the English language we are demonstrating just how effective this sort of name redemption/adaptation process can be.

However, the ancient case for ‘Isa as a Christian name is even stronger than I had realized. As quoted above, it turns out that ancient Arabic inscriptions from the 300s in the Jordanian desert show that ‘Isay was already being used by Arab nomads to refer to Jesus in that early period. Bear in mind, this is 300 years before Islam came along. The Wadi al-Khudari inscriptions in an older form of written Arabic, called Safaitic, bear this out.

I, for one, hope that the current consensus among our local believers about Jesus’ names holds for the long term. ‘Isa or Yasu’ can both be effectively claimed by the believing community and filled with glorious biblical meaning. Both have good clear roots going back to ancient Christian usage. Of the two of them, ‘Isa is currently far more clear, bringing to mind a man called the Messiah who worked miracles and is coming back to judge the world. But local believers will need to make the ultimate call for their churches and their own newly Christianizing language. The roots of names really do matter, as does their baggage, as does their ability to effectively bring the right person to mind. All of these realities need to be taken seriously in cases like this.

For now, if you ever hear someone claiming that ‘Isa was never a proper Christian name for Jesus, you know otherwise. It was being used for Jesus long before Islam came around, and a full three centuries, at that.

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 canย give hereย through the blog orย contact meย to find out how to give through our organization.ย 

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

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

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

*Names have been changed for security

Photo fromย Wikimedia Commons

Guests Mean God Cares for You

I’ve long wondered how our Central Asian people group fuels such energy and excitement for hospitality. Most households are genuinelyย excitedย when guests show up, even when they turn up unannounced. The household springs into action with warm machine-gun-fire blessings of welcome proclaimed and standing handshakes, hands on hearts, or kisses on cheeks all around. Quickly and energetically, guests are ushered into the hosting room, where they are given the best seats, quickly offered cold water, hot chai, snacks, and – if the hosts can succeed in their persuasion – an elaborate meal. And the hosts will thenย keepย pushing to see just how far they can convince their guests to accept even more hospitality. They’ll offer showers, naps, follow-up meals, and even spending the night – offering their own pajamas to shut down our attempts to excuse ourselves by saying that we didn’t pack for the night.ย 

Now, I’ve been watching our focus people group closely for many years. The overwhelming majority of these offers are genuine. Every once in a while, I’ll catch an acquaintance making an honorable but hypothetical offer, and I can tell his heart isn’t in it. But the vast majority of the time, the offers are made with what is honestly a perplexing depth of delight. Yes, all cultures know that, in the end, it is rewarding to host others well. But this level of hospitality takes aย lotย of work and money. It’s costly and tiring and, frankly, unsustainable unless you’ve got relatives around to help out. So, how is it possible for humans to beย thisย motivated to show hospitality?ย 

For a long time, it has seemed that thereโ€™s been something going on beneath the surface that could explain this incredible hosting energy. At last, I think we’ve found it.ย 

Turns out our local friends are raised to believe that guests are concrete evidence that God cares for you. There’s a local proverb that states, “Guests are God’s guests.” This means that guests are, in fact, blessings sent to a home by God himself – and evidence that more blessings lie in store. Local culture from ancient times has taught that guests are proof that God remembers you, cares for you, and wants to bless you. By sacrificing to show lavish hospitality, a family responds to God’s gift and puts itself even more in the way of God’s blessings, as it were.ย 

Locals believe that extravagant hospitality is a sort of spiritual investment. It is God giving them an opportunity to pour themselves out for others. And if they are found faithful to care for others as if they were more important than themselves, then God will see, remember them, and provide for their needs. This is why they light up when you tell them you’re coming to visit them. You’ve just told them that God remembers them – and wants to bless them.ย 

What a glorious instinct to have at the center of a fallen culture. How merciful of God to allow this kind of hospitality to still burn bright, even after centuries of Islam choking out so many other areas of common grace.ย 

This is not how Western culture has raised most of us, even those of us from hospitable families. But what has struck me is that this is how many mature believers in the West come to feel about giving sacrificially of their money. As Christians learn to give generously to the local church and to the poor, believing that God is indeed a great rewarder, we give lavishly of our finances, even beyond what others consider wise. We learn from experience and by testing God’s promises that this kind of giving is a surefire way to deeper joys and experiences of God’s provision. Opportunities to give are, in a sense, evidence that God cares for us, that he wants to fill our lives with his joy and provision – and with eternal rewards to boot. Western Christianity has its weaknesses, yes, but when it comes to generosity, it is often exemplary. If you doubt me on this, ask believers from other parts of the world.ย 

However, the Central Asian church is, to put it mildly, anemic when it comes to giving. Believers will often give a small token amount to save face, but balk at suggestions that they should risk something as radical as ten percent or even more of their income. No, they believe, it’s the job of the Western church to fund the churches and believers here with their endless flow of funds. This unfortunate sort of entitlement mindset is often present. And it has meant that there areย no self-supporting local churches that I know of in our country of service at all.ย 

I firmly believe that until our local friends learn how to give sacrificially to the church, they will be lacking certain kinds of spiritual power and joy. Why does our people group seem so hardened, so good at killing church plants? Why do the churches that exist seem so riven with gossip and division? Perhaps because most believers refuse to risk trusting God with their money. The Christian life is full of asymmetrical causes and effects like this. Obedience in one area unlocks joy and grace for obedience in other areas, even if at first glance they seem unrelated. If we want to see this land flooded with the light of the gospel, the locals are going to have to learn how to give.ย 

Much is at stake. So what is to be done to help local believers understand the positively stunning promises of God’s word when it comes to giving generously? Having now better understood their motivations that empower radical hospitality, I think we should start drawing on these same motivations to also empower giving. Essentially, the category for sacrificial giving already exists, and deeply so, within local culture. For believers, then, who are empowered by even deeper gospel motivations, it just needs to be expanded to include supporting the local church and missions financially. This might mean shifting how we talk about giving, such that we use more hospitality-specific vocabulary. It certainly means using the ‘guests are God’s guests’ mindset as an illustration of how God is calling believers to trust and obey when it comes to giving away their family’s funds.ย 

Tim Keller used to call this kind of thing floating the B doctrines on the A doctrines. Locally, giving money to the church is a B doctrine, something that our Central Asians don’t naturally resonate with. In fact, some find it a bit offensive, given how hard their lives are. But sacrificial Christian hospitality is an A doctrine, something local believers can yes and amen with incredible gusto and experience. By connecting them and showing how the one empowers the other, we ‘float’ the offensive one on the one that already deeply resonates. By doing so, we can help unlock new areas of obedience or belief that were previously no-go zones because of a given culture’s particular brokenness.ย 

While we’re at it, some of this should probably flow the other way as well. We from the Western church could use a renovation of our motivations for hospitality. As I just read this morning, God really does take care of the Shunammite woman in response to her hospitality toward Elisha (2 Kings 4, 8). This woman leaped at the chance to host God’s prophet, seemingly trusting that this guest was an opportunity to put herself in the way of God’s blessing. In response, God graciously gave her a son, and later, her land back. Even more than this, Christ assures us that if we even offer a cup of cold water to another believer, it’s like we’re offering a cup of cold water to Christ himself – an act that will not be forgotten by the great rewarder (Matt 10:42).

I had to remind myself of these things this week, as a single brother struggling with a recent breakup asked to come spend the night with us again. I was already tired, and I knew saying yes would mean a late night of listening and trying to give comfort and counsel. However, I was helped to say yes more from the heart by remembering that this was, in fact, God showing his careย for me, that he was giving me an opportunity to serve, and thereby to know more of his joy and provision. It’s more blessed to give than to receive, right?ย 

In this area, we can learn a great deal from our Central Asian friends. Guests really are evidence that God cares for us, that he will take care of us. And now in Christ, more so than we could ever imagine.ย 

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 canย give hereย through the blog orย contact meย to find out how to give through our organization.ย 

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

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

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

*Names have been changed for security

Photo fromย Unsplash

The Mullah from Matches Village

Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim* had left us downright speechless – quite the feat considering the rest of us had stayed up all night arguing.

The setting was that I’d been invited to spend the night in the university dormitory. But instead of getting any sleep, a group of local students and I had stayed up, engaged in rigorous but friendly debate about the claims of Islam vs. the claims of the gospel. The most vocal and passionate of these students, Job and Robert*, were from a rural area about an hour and a half northwest of Poet City.

I had recently learned a new way to share the gospel with Muslims, one that focused on telling a sequence of stories about Old Testament prophets and their sacrifices. This story set built and built until the climax where John the Baptist sees Jesus and cries out, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” In this way, I pressed the case that all the true prophets agreed that Jesus had to die as the final sacrifice and rise from the dead in order for there to be forgiveness of sins.

This was a new line of reasoning for these young Muslim men, one they had never encountered before. I could tell that a lot of them were struggling to answer the logic that came from hearing story after story, many of which Islam shared, that clearly pointed to Jesus being God’s promised sacrifice. The Qur’an says that its message agrees with the previous holy books. So why did it seem there was such central disagreement when it came to this theme of salvation by sacrifice alone?

But Job and Robert, in particular, weren’t going to give in. Robert’s father was a mullah, an Islamic preacher, so he knew his Islamic orthodoxy and apologetics very well.

“I will never let Jesus be the sacrifice for my sins! I will be the sacrifice for my own sins!” he eventually proclaimed.

It was sobering to hear Robert say this after a whole night of debate, but at least he was rejecting the gospel from a place of clarity. Far too often, our unbelieving friends reject the gospel without actually understanding what we’re trying to say.

At some point before sunrise, Job had called a mullah friend that he knew from back home. After he had woken him up and explained the situation to him, he had somehow convinced him to get on a bus and come to our city. This man, I was assured, would be able to show me the errors of my thinking.

The sun was up and shining by the time Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim arrived, looking a bit sick from his early morning bus ride but otherwise ready to jump into the fray. The students then asked me to explain my case to the good mullah. I did so, once again laying out the sequence of the eight or so stories that built the case for Jesus’ being God’s one true sacrifice for the sins of the world. Then, we waited for his response.

“Everything you have said is true, according to the Holy Qur’an,” Mullah Mahmoud said when I was done, much to everyone’s surprise, including mine.

“It is?” I said, somewhat confused.

“But… but Islam teaches that Jesus didn’t die on the cross!” Job protested.

“Wrong!” said Mullah Mahmoud. Then, he broke off into a nasal melodic chant:

“Dh qaala llaahu yaa ‘Iesaa innii mutawaffeeka wa raafi’uka ilayya wa mutahhiruka minal ladheena kafaruu, wa jaa’ilul ladheenat taba’ooka fawqal ladheena kafaruu ilaa yawmil qiyaamah; thumma ilayya marji’ukum fa ahkumu baynakum feemaa kuntum feehi takhtalifuun!”

It’s always bothered me when local Muslims quote the Qur’an in Arabic during religious conversations. I understand why they do it, since Islam teaches that Qur’anic translations into local languages don’t actually count as the word of Allah (they call them commentaries instead). But since so few locals actually know classical Arabic, this often just seems a tactic designed to shut down any objections from the plebes who don’t speak the alleged ‘language of paradise.’

As usual, the rest of us just sat there while the Mullah did his recitation, waiting for him to get to the point and explain things in a language the rest of us could understand.

Enjoying a dramatic pause, Mullah Mahmoud, at last, went on to explain. He had just quoted Surat Ali ‘Imran 3:55.

In English, it can be translated as, “Remember when Allah said, โ€œO Jesus! I will take you and raise you up to Myself. I will deliver you from those who disbelieve, and elevate your followers above the disbelievers until the Day of Judgment. Then to Me you will all return, and I will settle all your disputes.”

However, the mullah contended, there is a translation issue in the Arabic word mutawaffeeka. In Qur’anic Arabic, he contended, it means, “I will cause you to die.” Not “I will take you.”

“Jesus the Messiah died on the cross!” the mullah proclaimed triumphantly.

This is what left the rest of us stunned and quite unsure of what to say next. The poor, sleep-deprived university students looked somewhat gutted. They had argued all night long, brought in the backup they had thought would deal the final blow against the Christian message, only to have the mullah agreeing with the Christian!”

“Of course,” he added, clearing his throat, “that doesn’t mean he’s the Son of God or anything. Just that he did die on the cross and then ascended to paradise. There’s always been a stream of sound Muslim scholars who have believed this way.”

Job was clearly surprised and perplexed at what his friend had done. Robert looked like he had discovered a traitor in the ranks, and a leader at that. I, for my part, got the good mullah’s phone number. If he really believed that Jesus died on the cross, then we needed to be friends.

This was the beginning of one of the oddest friendships I would have during that first year on the field as a single. Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim was tall and lanky young mullah, with large ears, a pointy chin, and wide, energetic eyes. He had a broad toothy smile that contrasted with his short dark beard. He, like his father before him (hence the two Mullahs in his full name), was in charge of the small mosque in a village so small it was named Matches, i.e. as small as a matchbox. When Mullah Mahmoud sat down cross-legged on the floor, his process of folding up his long pointy limbs resembled the migratory storks native to his area that built huge nests on top of the electricity towers, birds the local language has colorfully named the ‘leggy pilgrims.’

But Mullah Mahmoud was an odd bird in other ways as well. I soon learned that he loved to craft flowery lines of over-the-top poetic affection – and to quote them to me in our conversations.

“You are my brother! And your mother is my aunt! And you are in the garden of my heart! And I will put a chair in that garden and you will sit there! And there will be flowers! And little butterflies will fly around you! Ahahaha-ha!”

Now, our people group are known for their highly verbal culture of respect. They say all kinds of things to one another in daily interactions that seem odd or over-the-top to Westerners. But Mullah Mahmoud was taking things to another level of weird (though thankfully, still platonic as far as I could tell). I’ll often try to respond back to my Central Asian with a few appropriate phrases like “You are a respectable one,” or “You are my big brother,” etc. But when Mullah Mahmoud would go on one of his flowery monologues I would often find myself pretty much unable to respond at all,

“Um… thanks? So then…”

This never seemed to deter him, however, so over time, I came to dread the long flowery calls from Mullah Mahmoud more and more. But I kept the friendship going, one, to be polite, but two, because Mullah Mahmoud was genuinely open to serious Bible study.

I don’t think he’d ever known a true Christian before, so when he would visit he was fascinated to sit down with me and my teammates and to pore over the Bible together. First, we got him a Bible in his native language. Then he asked for one in English as well, and then later one in Arabic. We were more than happy to oblige.

During one visit, we pulled an all-nighter of our own, staying up until the dawn answering question after question by taking him to various passages of scripture.

“This message of the good news is so beautiful, so amazing. That God become a man like this to save us from our sins…” I remember him saying this as we sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea in the early morning sunlight.

For several months, Mullah Mahmoud seemed like he might be getting close to genuine faith. He was careful not to show this when we were having discussions together with other Muslims, such as when we visited Job and his relatives together, who lived just a couple villages down the road from the mullah. Instead, he would even publicly attack Christianity and the Bible. This initially surprised me, but I learned that in an honor-shame context it’s not uncommon for someone who is genuinely open to only reveal that in private, while in public they maintain a robustly pro-Islam appearance. For a mullah with public religious responsibilities, this was even more understandable.

However, a day came when the questions began to shift, moving away from questions of substance toward pointing out alleged contradictions in the Biblical text like the number of Solomon’s chariot stables. This seemed to be evidence that Mullah Mahmoud had started listening to Islamic apologists like Zakr Naik, figures that excel in taking Bible verses out of context and in keeping Muslims fixated on tangential things and distracted from considering the more important questions at stake.

Before I went back to the US, I visited Mullah Mahmoud and stayed with him for a couple nights at his home in Matches village. On this visit, I remember pressing him hard when we were alone on the fact that he had gone back to maintaining that the Bible had been changed. I insisted that if he truly believed this, then he was admitting he held that men were stronger than God, that some group of Jews or Christians somewhere could somehow altar the eternal word of God which God has promised multiple times to protect forever. His response was to claim that the ‘true Bible’ had actually been preserved by God, but must have hidden in a mosque in Yemen or somewhere like that.

In the face of silly arguments like that, it was clear to me that the window of genuine openness had closed. I was sad that this odd friend of mine would, after months of serious study, settle for the status quo instead of eternal life. Yes, had he followed Jesus his life would have been completely upended, perhaps even forfeit. His wife would probably have left him. The villagers of his area would at least run him out if not try to kill him, such would be the threat they’d feel from an Islamic leader that becomes a Christian. It’s likely that Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim had counted the cost, and found it to be simply too high.

But as far as I know, he never went back on his earlier belief that Jesus had indeed died on the cross. And he never got rid of his Bibles in three different languages. This means that the Word of God is sitting there in little Matches village, like a spiritual time bomb waiting to go off, either in Mullah Mahmoud’s heart or in someone else’s.

It’s never worked out to reconnect with him. Part of me is not sure I can bear enduring the awful poetic phone calls were we to get back in touch. And part of me is not sure of revisiting a high-intensity relationship where so much sowing seemed to demonstrate, in the end, shallow soil. There are so many others who have not yet the chance to hear the good news.

So, for now, I’ve put Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim in the category of “If God wants us back in touch, he’ll providentially cause our paths to cross.” Over the years I’ve found this to be a helpful category to have for complicated past relationships where good investment didn’t necessarily lead to good fruit.

But I will never forget the bomb that Mullah Mahmoud dropped that morning in that university dorm room. An Islamic mullah who actually believed that Jesus really did die on the cross. What an unexpected thing to find in the wild. And what a good reminder that sometimes the most unlikely of people might, in fact, be those closest to 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 kidsโ€™ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

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

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

*Names have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash

Lessons Learned in Wartime

We’ve never been this close to a war before. We’ve had near brushes with terrorism, yes, and we’ve been through our fair share of unpredictable geopolitical crises. But thirteen consecutive days of missiles and drones being (mostly) intercepted and exploding in the skies around our city? This is a qualitatively new experience.ย 

We are learning some interesting things. Here are a few of them: 

The sound of certain incoming or intercepted missiles is just like that of a normal low-flying plane being suddenly interrupted by a distant firework. 

Other weapons, such as ballistic missiles or C-RAM air defense systems, sound a lot scarier. 

The smell of missiles and drones intercepted nearby is just like that of fireworks or cheap firecrackers. 

The line between wide-eyed curiosity and genuine fear is a fine one, crossed at different places for different individuals, and often unpredictable even for oneself. 

X (formerly Twitter) is a powerful resource for both real-time security updates (I’m talking even seconds after an explosion is heard) as well as lots of misleading photoshopped or AI images. 

Having contacts with access to detailed intelligence and analysis is far more helpful than relying on official government communication.ย 

Knowing the local language and having lots of local friends is priceless when it comes to risk assessment and situational awareness.ย 

Iranians, God bless them, when backed into a corner, will not respond the way Westerners expect them to. One of my best friends back in the West is an Iranian, so I have seen this on an interpersonal level, and am now seeing it play out on the international level. Exhibit A: None of us would have ever expected our friends in Dubai to receive so many more attacks than we have here.ย 

Humor is important for processing times like this. We may or may not have used AI to insert Godzilla into one fake photoshopped image that claimed to show our city going up in flames, then sent it to a certain subset of friends that we knew would appreciate it. 

It’s good to have an internal room without windows set up with mattresses and 72 hours of water and food, just in case. 

It’s also important to make sure that if the boys play with Legos in said safe room, they clean them up. During an attack in the predawn darkness the other day, I heard my wife call out, “Gah! The only thing worse than a drone attack is stepping on Legos during a drone attack!” 

It’s far too easy to get lost in doom-scrolling for hours during crises like these, and to lose sight of important daily disciplines.ย It is stunning how the brain can turn to mush and motivation utterly evaporate when wars and rumors of wars take over our social media feeds.

Community, especially Christian community, is utterly essential. Wise precautions sometimes need to be taken, but nothing comforts and encourages the heart in wartime like gathering with other believers to sit under the word, pray, laugh, and lament together. Isolation leads to trauma. Face-to-face community leads to courage and resilience. 

1st Peter is a great book to preach during times like this. This is what the local language church just started preaching through at the beginning of the war, having planned beforehand to do so โ€“ something that was very obviously God’s timing. Last week, we started hearing the ‘fireworks’ in the distance while the pastor was preaching an overview of the book and expounding chapter 4 verse 8, “Beloved, do not be surprised atย the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” After half a dozen muted explosions, the congregation was getting nervous. Wisely, the pastor paused to acknowledge what was happening and to pray. Then, he got back to the sermon. The congregation calmed down, then leaned into theย remarkablyย applicable texts we were hearing. For our context, this was a good way to respond. Civilian infrastructure has not yet been targeted in our city, so we were just as safe sitting in the church gathering as anywhere else we could have gone. And if some stray crashing drone had somehow found us there, then what better way to go? After the sermon, we took communion and sang together. I, for one, was deeply thankful that we had chosen to gather.

Last lesson for now: There is an interesting place that is neither feeling compelled to stay nor compelled to go, but simply feeling free โ€“ free to stay and serve until something big changes or the war comes to an end. That’s where we currently find ourselves. We hope to steward this season and freedom well, as long or as short as it may be.ย 

May God grant peace and a swift and just end to this war. And may its end result in greater access for the gospel. Pray with us to that end. 

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 kidsโ€™ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

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

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

Photo from Unsplash

A Song from Patrick’s Breastplate

I was excited to see that Josh Garrels has recently put out a song based on the ancient prayer, Saint Patrick’s Breastplate. While aspects of this prayer have made its way into a number of worship songs, this song from Garrels contains some solid chunks from the long prayer. Still, I found myself wishing he had written another verse working in some of the more ancient and, to us, strange lyrics of this old missionary prayer. But overall it is a really good song, the kind of which I hope we get more of. There are some very powerful lyrics passed down to us from the ancient church. Put them together with melodies we can sing and hum now and that’s one lovely fusion.

Here’s what I wrote about this fascinating prayer more than five years ago when I first posted about it:

This ancient Irish prayer was written either by Patrick or by one of his early Irish disciples. Notice how Trinitarian this prayer is. Notice how Christ-centered it is. Notice also how holistic it is – there is no sense in which the spiritual realm and the physical creation are against one another. Both belong to God and are on the side of the Christian. Notice the clues that show how real the persecution and danger still were when this prayer was written. The author reminds himself that he is not alone, but that he stands in a long and honorable line of spiritual beings and faithful believers. He constantly reminds himself that the true reward that matters is that which comes on the last day. As he preaches God’s word, he calls on all the power of God to protect him from enemies within and enemies without, among whom were the still-dangerous Celtic druids. The author doesn’t pretend their power isn’t real, but contends that the power of God is greater. Ultimately, the author trusts in the presence of Christ in the midst of the many dangers he faces. This is the kind of prayer we need to be writing in today’s contexts of persecution.

I arise today; Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity; Through a belief in the threeness; Through confession of the oneness; Of the Creator of Creation.

I arise today; Through the strength of Christ’s birth with his baptism; Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial; Through the strength of his resurrection and his ascension; Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.

I arise today; Through the strength of the love of Cherubim; The obedience of angels; In the service of archangels; In hope of resurrection to meet with reward; In prayers of patriarch; In predictions of prophets; In preaching of apostles; In faith of confessors; In innocence of holy virgins; In deeds of righteous men.

I arise today; Through the strength of heaven: Light of sun; Radiance of moon; Splendor of fire; Speed of lightning; Swiftness of wind; Depth of Sea; Stability of earth; Firmness of rock.

I arise today; Through God’s strength to pilot me; God’s might to uphold me; God’s wisdom to guide me; God’s eye to look before me; God’s ear to hear me; God’s word to speak for me; God’s hand to guard me; God’s way to lie before me; God’s shield to protect me; God’s host to save us; From snares of devils; From temptation of vices; From everyone who shall wish me ill; Afar and near; Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils; Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul; Against incantations of false prophets; Against black laws of pagandom; Against false laws of heretics; Against craft of idolatry; Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards; Against every knowledge that corrupts man’s body and soul.

Christ to shield me today; Against poison, against burning; Against drowning, against wounding; So that there may come to me abundance of reward. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me; Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me; Christ on my right, Christ on my left; Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise; Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me; Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me; Christ in the eye that sees me; Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today; Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity; Through belief in the threeness; Through confession of the oneness; Of the Creator of Creation.

Patrick or one of his spiritual descendants; translated by Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, pp. 116-119

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 kidsโ€™ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

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

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