Author: entrustedtothedirt

In Missions, These Things Combined Mean Someone is Getting Played

Yesterday, I saw a claim made by an American pastor-missionary-trainer that he was heading to a nearby country to do some training with leaders from our region. Among other things, he said that one of the ‘streams’ this network of leaders represents has 100 churches in one of our sister unreached people groups. This is a group that shares the same ethnic name as our focus people group, but speaks a different related language. 

100 churches! Amazing, right? The Spirit must really be on the move in this part of the world!

Here’s the problem. The long-term workers on the ground who have actually learned the language to an advanced level only know of one church among that language group, and that a very unhealthy one. Some of our dear friends have labored for years in this unreached language and are finally on the cusp of planting a church – the first healthy church in that language group. And it’s not like some political border means we can’t easily go and verify either. The entirety of this language group’s homeland is right here in the country where we and these other missionaries live, only a short drive from where we live in Caravan City.

So, who’s right? The international trainer with the exciting claims or the missionaries on the ground who can speak the locals’ mother tongue and are neck-deep in direct discipleship relationships?

Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence in global missions. While it usually takes place in other regions of the world, with South Asia in particular being notorious for its wild claims of movements to Christ, every once in a while, I’ll hear of some organization making similar claims for our people group or those related to it. I cannot say much about South Asia or the fantastical claims made about what is happening there. But when it comes to our corner of Central Asia, I can testify that these claims are almost always smoke and mirrors.

“I’m immediately skeptical of whoever this is.”

This was my response when I heard this week about this leader and his trainings and his claims of 100 churches among our sister people group. This is because the different factors in this sort of claim combine to make a particular sort of smell, the smell of someone taking advantage of the people of God. The odor of someone doing the kind of work that soon disappears into the wind like so much chaff, while they then move on to some other work with an even better ROI.

Here’s a formula of sorts that tends to hold up pretty well here in Central Asia, and likely across the broader missions world:

A foreigner, more often than not non-residential, who doesn’t learn the language

+ short-term translated “trainings,” often in third countries or online

+ reports of amazing numbers of disciples and churches planted

+ ministry done solely and indirectly through paid local partners

+ claims that simple New Testament methods are being rediscovered and used

+ assurances that “God is moving in an unprecedented way among ______ !”

+ lots of appeals for money

_______________________

= someone is getting played

There are variations of the above formula, of course, but the fact that someone is getting played tends to stay constant across the board when you have a combination of the above ingredients. And by someone, I primarily mean generous believers back in the West who give to the trainer’s organization because they genuinely care about the advance of the gospel. These believers back in the homeland are deceived both into giving and into thinking that God is working in ways he is not actually working. Both are terrible ways to deceive people. But I would argue the second is probably more evil than the first. Tricking people out of their money is bad, of course, but relatively mainstream as far as sin goes. But Jesus said some terrifying things about those who attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Beelzebul (Matthew 12:31-32). What might that mean about those who deceive others into thinking something is a work of the Spirit when it’s actually a work of Mammon? 

Not only that, but the effect on believers on either side of the world when they find they’ve been duped is awful. I have seen this effect firsthand among locals. For those who were unfortunate enough to first be exposed to Christianity in one of these evangelical missions money hustles, if they’re not successfully seduced into the hustle, there is a terrible moment when they realize that the leaders in this Jesus thing are just like those in Islam – hypocrites out for selfish gain. The light seems to fade from their face, and their whole demeanor sinks back into a guarded skepticism. After this, they are often unwilling to gather with believers again for years to come, if ever. Again, Jesus says terrifying things about those who cause little ones, such as new believers, to stumble (Luke 17:2). Some who are lauded as inspirational missionaries in this world will be wearing millstones in the next. 

If you look again at the above formula, you’ll notice that each of the parts on its own, except for the end result, is not necessarily bad. In fact, each part can be done faithfully. For example, there are some countries where missionaries can’t get visas. It’s not always necessary or possible for someone to learn the local language in order to do solid training. Genuine movements of God have happened in church history, such as the first Great Awakening or the Korean Pentecost. Sometimes ministry needs to be done primarily through local partners, and sometimes those local partners should be paid. There are times to return to simpler NT methods when good extra-biblical traditions have become too cumbersome. And appeals for money are good when made by faithful workers, as even Paul himself modeled. Yet there’s something about combining all of these ingredients together in our current era of evangelical missions that tends to be evidence that something poisonous is taking place. Bleach is a good household tool. So is vinegar. Put them together, and you get a deadly chlorine gas. 

There are three ways I’ve observed in which the foreign-trainer figure is complicit or not in the overall deception. First, there are situations where the foreign leader is himself fully deceived by the local partners, though the foreigner is a faithful Christian trying to do good work. I once knew of a solid Reformed pastor who would visit our region every year in order to partner with a local leader up in the mountains. Sadly, I would later learn this local brother he was partnering with was a textbook wolf. Like all wolves in sheep’s clothing, he was very good at deception, so he managed to secure lots of funding and visits from this faithful pastor through things like strategic photos, compelling stories, and crowded house church services full of mobilized ‘believers’ that would suddenly appear whenever this pastor happened to be in town. But this local man was the same one who was making sure that all of the residential missionaries got reported to the secret police and run out of town. This faithful pastor unfortunately died before we had the chance to expose how he was being deceived. 

For non-residential leaders who want to avoid this first kind of situation, the best thing to do is to befriend trustworthy long-term missionaries or local pastors on the ground who can help you vet potential partners. These need to be missionaries or pastors who know the language and who can verify, in-person whenever possible, that your local partners are really who they say they are. For those living on the field, the best course of action to avoid this is to go ahead and learn the language and culture yourself, or to make sure that some on your team do. It’s shocking how much can be missed when partnership is happening through translation. 

The second category is when the foreigner-trainer is aware that the reality of things is not exactly the same as what is being presented when they send out their newsletters. But because they feel that so much good is being done through this ministry or movement, or because they just don’t want conflict, they choose to turn a blind eye to the billows of black smoke filling the sky that seem to suggest that there is a fire somewhere around here. Those who choose this path are guilty of deceiving themselves, of people-pleasing, of foolishness, and maybe even of cowardice. Rather than continuing to listen to the voice of naivete or fear, leaders or trainers in this category need to get clarity on what is really happening in the ministry they are partnering with. Again, those in this category have no better allies than those long-termers on the ground. Then, they need to take courage, repent of their part, confront those doing the deception, and make a clean break. Yes, even if that means they are the Western guy telling the indigenous pastors that they are in sin. 

The third category belongs to the actual hustlers. These are the missionary-trainer types who are fully complicit in the deception. They have learned how to tell stories, share stats, and manipulate well-meaning believers so that the money flows for the projects themselves, for their local partners, for their own dopamine hits, and for their own pockets. I hate that this is actually happening on the mission field, but it is. It’s happening even in our own corner of Central Asia. These hustler types tend to be great communicators, amazing fundraisers, skillful project managers – and wickedly good at all kinds of gaslighting and deception. Their amazing level of travel, projects, and output shields them from criticism. As does the radical-seeming nature of their work, usually being connected to some country or region that is known as militantly anti-Christian. Who wants to question the work of someone who claims to be facilitating church-planting movements in regions that have been devastated by ISIS, for example? 

Those in this category are playing a very dangerous game. At best, if they are believers, then they risk making it into the kingdom by the skin of their teeth, while all their work is exposed as chaff and burned up (1 Cor 3:13-15). At worst, they are false believers whose entire lives and ministries are built around using the Great Commission for the sake of personal gain. Based on God’s wrath against those like Simon the sorcerer, Ananias and Sapphira, and Judas, I’m confident there is a special part of hell for people like this. 

No particular kind of methodology is fully immune to these sorts of predatory missionaries. But some methodologies are, by their very philosophy and structure, much more compatible with deception. I’ve not often come out in my writing directly against DMM (disciple making movements) and movement methodology practitioners. I know that there are some out there who are careful believers who are trying to use these methodologies in ways that are faithful to scripture. I respect these workers’ motives, even as I disagree with them about their work. But after a couple of decades now, the evidence is mounting that the results of these methodologies are often highly questionable and concerning. At the very least, a DMM-type approach provides the perfect cover for someone who wants deceive God’s people for the sake of financial gain, whether that be a local who is deceiving his foreign partner, or locals and foreigners who are in on it together. 

Every part of the above formula for someone getting played is compatible with the way DMM is often carried out on the field. Missionary ‘facilitators’ or ‘trainers’ are encouraged to be non-residential, or to not invest costly years in direct language and culture learning, but instead to increase their ROI by leaning fully on locals, who are, as is often pointed out, much cheaper to fund. Instead of long decades of direct evangelism, discipleship, and modeling by example, DMM tends to advocate short trainings where the trainees are then responsible to go out and implement what they’ve learned without any direct involvement of the missionary. DMM practitioners make all kinds of claims about astounding numbers of disciples made and churches planted, often in the parts of the world that are most resistant to the gospel. And these claims go hand in hand with claims of recovering New Testament methodology where ‘everyone is a disciple maker’ and where there are ‘no experts,’ emphases that tend to gut any real spiritual authority for the good guys, while creating all kinds of space for little tyrants to take over. 

And then there’s money. Perhaps DMM practitioners in other parts of the world don’t do it this way. But here in our corner of Central Asia, DMM and lots of money changing hands absolutely go together. Of course they do. Amazing reports of gospel breakthrough in hard places inspire God’s people to give generously. And money, at least temporarily, is a wonderful lubricant to make sure a large network of locals falls in line with your particular silver-bullet methods. 

Tangentially, many DMM emphases, such as its ‘no experts’ approach and dislike of formal organization and preaching, are terrible contextualization for our Central Asian culture. This means that locals will, temporarily, do what they need to in order to secure their monthly funding – or at least take enough pictures and videos to make it appear so. But once the money dries up, the locals don’t continue with their ‘disciple making.’ After all, these methods have been cooked up among Western missiologists who are stuck in their own post-institutional, egalitarian, results-driven cultural moment. Even if we don’t talk about their biblical merits or lack thereof, these approaches don’t make any sense to our Central Asian neighbors. Once the money is gone, one of my favorite old adages comes out again, 

“Welcome to Central Asia, where all the methodologies come to die.” 

Friends, watch out for the above formula. It is often the case that these ingredients together are a recipe for deception in missions, or at least for poor work that won’t stand the test of time. The advocates of this sort of work often sound so good. But just like grandma said, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And as is the case when I heard about these 100 churches in our area (that don’t exist), when these ingredients are combined, someone is getting played. 

Note: I followed up and did some research on the leader making these claims. Sadly, all indications are that he’s a category 3 hustler type. “Borderline criminal” is how one faithful long-time worker among that people group put it. Lord, have mercy. May God grow his church here and protect the local believers as well as those back in the West from those who would use them for selfish gain.

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 schoolyear. 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

Winning the Argument, Losing the Relationship

Back in 2008, my fellow single teammates and I were invited to help with some English clubs that Ron*, an older missionary veteran, had set up at various universities. One of these clubs was the setting for that one time when a few of us donned overalls and fake hillbilly beards and tried to lead an auditorium of very perplexed Central Asian students in a rousing rendition of Soggy Bottom Boys’ Man of Constant Sorrow.

I also started traveling with Ron once a month to a university in a city three hours south of us. This city was down in the desert flatlands, and much hotter than Poet City, the kind of place where after a five-minute walk in the bazaar your shirt is already soaked through with sweat. 

I remember making this drive one time with Ron when he pointed out the old ruins of Zoroastrian fire towers up on a nearby peak.

“A.W.,” he said in his Texan accent, “Next time we do this drive, we should stop and climb up to those towers, lay hands on them, and pray down Chemosh! Pretty sure he’s the territorial spirit still in charge of this land.” 

I turned to see if Ron was joking. Nope. He was dead serious. I did my best to answer diplomatically. Ron was, after all, an older veteran missionary who had served in multiple countries. He regularly published articles in well-known missions periodicals and had been in leadership positions probably longer than I had been alive. But I was pretty sure then, and still am now, that Ron and I laying hands on Zoroastrian ruins and attempting to rebuke an ancient Babylonian god would have little effect on the power that Islam currently exerted over our local friends. Not that the same cadre of demons can’t be behind these three very different evil religious systems. And not that prayer is ineffective. But more because the Bible seems to have us taking on demonic rulers, powers, and principalities asymmetrically, primarily as we engage other humans with gospel proclamation, pray for them, and plant healthy churches. As well as, of course, the occasional exorcism. 

Even then, as a newly continuationist twenty-year-old, something felt very off about the way that certain missions circles turn casting down territorial spirits and doing spiritual mapping into their own kinds of pseudo-science, theories that they discuss and act on so confidently with so little actual biblical grounding. 

But I digress. This is not a post about territorial spirits and spiritual mapping. This is a post about evangelism gone wrong. 

Ron was leaving the country. Like other missionaries at the time, he looked at the young network of indigenous house churches that had been planted across our region and assumed that it was high time for the Westerners to “trust the Spirit” and “get out of the way.” This kind of assumption would, of course, lead to the tragic implosion of most of these house churches just a couple of years later. Their leaders weren’t even close to being ready for their mentors to leave them on their own. And most of the young local believers, like my friend Adam*, would be scattered to the wind. 

But in the summer of 2008, things were looking so promising that our people group was being held up by some organizations as a good example of how missionaries among Muslim people groups could get it right. And pioneering types like Ron were itching to move on and to hand off the projects they had started. That was the intention for this trip. Ron was going to say his goodbyes in this desert city and try to set things up so that my team (which was three college dudes at that point) could take over the English club. 

After the meetings were finished, a group of us went out to dinner together to celebrate over some good local food. Ron, his wife, and a single gal who was on their team were all flying out that week. So, this was their final meal with Muhammad*, a young local man who had been working as their project facilitator/translator for some time. 

These young local fixer-types are absolutely crucial for so many of the NGOs operating in our corner of Central Asia. They help us expats navigate government processes, serve as our culture advisors, interpret for us when needed, and do all sorts of practical intern work, whether it’s vehicles or offices or even just knowing where to find things in the endless alleys of the bazaar. If they are working for a Christian NGO, then they usually end up hearing the gospel a lot. Some of them come to faith. Others of them stay stuck in a weird long-term posture of being pro-Western, Christianity-friendly, and very much still committed to Islam. 

Apparently, the latter was Muhammad’s posture. But seeing that this was his last chance, Ron was determined to press him hard on the gospel. So, at some point toward the end of the meal, Ron suddenly called Muhammad out, asking him if he was ready to leave Islam and believe in Jesus. The abruptness of this pivot in the middle of the meal we’d been having caught us all a bit off-guard, Muhammad included. But Muhammad was a respectful and tactful guy from a culture not as uncomfortable as ours is with direct questions about religion. So, he recovered quickly, finding an honorable way to tell his boss, a much older man, that no, he was not going to do what he was suggesting. 

Ron, however, didn’t take the way out of the conversation that Muhammad had just extended to him. Instead, he pressed harder. Muhammad, sensing that he now needed to defend his beliefs which were being publicly challenged, starting pushing back more himself, bringing up many of the typical objections Muslims have against Christianity: Jesus isn’t the Son of God, Jesus didn’t die on the cross, the Bible’s been changed, the Trinity is illogical, and of course man can get to paradise by doing enough good deeds. 

This is where I came in. For some months, I had been engaged in almost daily evangelistic and apologetic conversations with my Central Asian friends. And I had been loving it. I had developed a strong arsenal of biblical, logical, and cultural responses to all of the typical Islamic objections to the gospel. One by one, I began to dismantle everything Muhammad was saying. 

This went on for some time. Ron would press. Muhammad would defend. I would dismantle. I was downright energized at how quickly my mind was working and how effectively the arguments seemed to be rolling off my tongue. I knew the case I was building was a powerful one. I didn’t know Muhammad super well, but surely, he would sense the truth in what we were saying and come around. I could clearly see that Muhammad’s claims were being destroyed, one by one, and I was encouraged by this. That is, until I looked up and noticed Rachel*, the single gal on Ron’s team, sitting off to the side of the table and looking at Muhammad with a look of pain on her face. 

What does that mean? I wondered to myself. 

I followed her gaze to Muhammad’s face, and that’s when I also noticed. Muhammad’s expression had become defensive, his eyes dark and hurt. It was the face of someone who had been trapped by those he thought were his friends, someone whose trust had been betrayed in the middle of a meal meant to honor his departing coworkers. It was the demeanor of someone who had been shamed by those he had been loyal to, not the look of someone being won by the beauty of the gospel at all. No, I suddenly realized, it was the look of someone who had been driven further away from Jesus by evangelism – evangelism done in truth, but not in love. 

Muhammad left that night very upset, not even wanting to say goodbye to Ron. Rachel left grieved. I left confused. But Ron left with a confident smile on his face, seemingly feeling like he had done his duty. Later on, he complimented me on how well I had done in the conversation. 

“You were on fire tonight, A.W.”

But I didn’t feel very happy about how things had gone. Yes, my arguments had been great. But something had gone very wrong in the whole relational dynamic of the evening. I had participated in some sort of evangelism that was so right it was wrong. We had won the argument, but lost the relationship. We had pinned Muhammad to the wall. In doing so, we had inadvertently communicated to him that he was only valuable to us if he believed in Jesus in the end. 

I don’t know what ever became of Muhammad. I’ve never run into him in the years that have passed since that summer evening back in ’08. But I’ve thought of him many times over the years, regretting how things went down. It’s easy for evangelistic conversations to get emotional and even heated. To some extent, this is only natural when humans are debating things that are so personal and weighty. However, I’ve become convinced that faithful evangelism is just as much about the how as it is about the what. 

Sure, some people will get offended and upset even if the evangelist’s demeanor remains loving and relational. But it is the duty of the evangelist, as much as it depends on them, to communicate grace and gentleness right alongside the bright and sharp truths of their words. The wise evangelist keeps a constant eye on the body language of the hearer, watching out for evidence that the tenor of the conversation is pushing them too far. And if it comes down to winning the argument or losing the relationship, the wise evangelist puts the argument aside for now and protects the relationship. 

Again, this is not always possible. Some people will blow up at you or cut you off, even if your demeanor clearly communicates that you value them regardless of whether they accept your message or not. But far too often, Christians are only focused on winning the argument in the short-term. And they forget that a long-term friendship that revisits the gospel again and again is far more powerful than a one-time gospel smackdown that makes that unbeliever never want to see you again. 

Is what I’m saying biblical? Consider Paul’s advice on evangelism in Colossians 4:5-6, “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”

Or, his advice to Timothy about how to navigate arguments, “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Timothy 2:24-26).

The Bible has a category for prioritizing the relationship over the argument. That doesn’t mean we don’t speak the truth. But it does mean we need to pay careful attention to how we speak the truth. It’s possible to say the most offensive things with a demeanor that communicates care. That needs to be our goal. We want our unbelieving friends to be shocked by the hard truths we believe about them, and at the same time, shocked by how much we clearly love and care for them. This bizarre contrast should, in some ways, disturb them. 

“How can they believe I deserve an eternal hell when they are the same ones who show me more genuine love than anyone else does?” 

When our unbelieving friends are wrestling with these kinds of questions, we know we’ve gotten the posture right. 

These days, most of my evangelism is taking place in my living room. Every week, we partner with some local believing friends by opening up our home for a long evening of chai, snacks, and spiritual conversation. About half of the fifteen or so men who come are believers, and about half are not. Many of these young unbelievers are post-Islamic angsty philosopher types, but a few mainstream Muslim guys come too. The conversations range all over the place, but every week a good number of us believers get to go deep into gospel truths. 

As I’ve reflected on what exactly God is doing in these largely unstructured gatherings that leave our living room trashed every week and my wife and me with a ministry hangover the next morning, I think much of it might have to do with modeling relational evangelism for the local believers. Some of them, like a certain twenty-year-old I remember well, tend to get caught up in the emotion and the intensity of the discussions. One young believer, a passionate cage-stage Calvinist who is reading the Institutes via Google Translate, will often physically shake and have to excuse himself early because he’s gotten so worked up in an argument with an unbeliever about the gospel (or with a believer about TULIP). 

However, the hope is that week in and week out, these brothers will continue to share the gospel even as they also show hospitality and steady friendship to the many unbelieving guys who are also coming. Yes, I delight to see these believers’ answers and arguments becoming more sound, biblical, and compelling. But just as much, I delight to see them light up with genuine joy when Mahmoud*, the stubborn taxi driver philosopher, arrives at the door after not coming around for a few weeks. 

As with so many aspects of evangelism, it’s resting in the Spirit’s sovereignty that means that bold evangelism and genuine relational love need not be at odds with one another. Faithful evangelists can put the argument aside in order to care for the heart of the one they’ve been arguing with. How? Because they know that it’s not ultimately up to them to win. If Ron and I had leaned better on this truth all those years ago, we may still have shared the gospel with Muhammad that night. But once we sensed that he wasn’t yet open to Jesus, we could have put the conversation on pause, trusting that the Spirit would later open the door. It wasn’t necessary for us to force it. It wasn’t necessary for us to pin him against the wall and to publicly defeat him as we did. 

Looking back, I’m sorry for the way things went down that night, even though I trust that God can sovereignly use even that aggressive conversation to draw Muhammad to himself. Who knows? He may already be a believer, wherever he is out there. 

But I am also determined that, as much as it depends on me, I want to faithfully share the gospel, being willing to sometimes lose the argument. Why? To win the relationship. And that, perhaps forever.

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 schoolyear. 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

*Names changed for security

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

Photo from Unsplash


A Proverb on Donkeys and Dumpster Fires

Come and get this donkey out of the mud!

Yes, it seems there is no end to the proverbs featuring donkeys in our Central Asian language. Here’s yet another one. The meaning of this proverb is similar to the Google/Oxford definition of that smelly and colorful American idiom, dumpster fire, “a chaotic or disastrously mishandled situation.”

Let’s say that someone has mismanaged things so badly that it seems there’s no solution to be found. That’s when you pull this proverb out. 

There are daily household applications for this kind of a proverb, such as when questioning one child tattling about getting slapped in the face by a dirty sock leads back to the fact that they had just hit their sister, which then leads back to yet another sibling’s sin, which then leads to collective sin and foolishness against what all the offspring had been asked to do by their parents in the first place. Where does the discerning parent start when it’s general donkey dumpster fire behavior all around? 

Then there are times in ministry when you are faced with situations so convoluted by sin and foolishness that it boggles the mind how one person could ever create such a tangled, knotted mess. Here I recall a season early on in marriage when we were invited to move into the upstairs of a family from our church for the sake of life-on-life community. Shortly after moving in and starting a new community group with this family, one that was full of messy new believers with their own needs of intensive care, it emerged that the father of the household where we were newly living had been regularly committing adultery with another Christian woman from the same neighborhood – a woman whose husband was known for his love of guns. The fallout and damage control required for this situation was its own kind of baptism by fire for me as a 24-year-old brand-new community group leader. It might someday merit a post of its own, if I can ever figure out how to tell the story. At least it can serve here as a fitting illustration for what it looks like to try to get the proverbial donkey out of the neck-deep mud at a local church level. 

On the macro level, the political and ethnic situation of our entire region at large can often feel like this. Basically, every group has committed genocide against everyone else at some point, stolen each other’s land, oppressed one another, and then themselves gone on to suffer the same things. What does justice look like when everyone and their ancestors have everyone else’s and everyone else’s ancestors’ blood on their hands?

As we heard preached in the local language this past week, God’s word acknowledges the universality of these kinds of dumpster fires and braying donkeys stuck fast in the mud. The preacher of Ecclesiastes 7 concludes that section with this sober dose of realism, “This only have I found: God made mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many schemes” (Ecc 7:29). Alas, we fallen humans have a remarkable capacity to take God’s good gifts and to twist them into the most unbelievable messes.

As believers, we know that no mess is so intractable that God’s perfect grace and justice can’t eventually untangle and remake it, both now and in the coming resurrection. There is a real, if heavy, hope in that. This means we can confidently get down in the mud and begin digging. But we are right to lament the mess at the same time. 

Thankfully, as is so often the case in Central Asia, there’s a proverb for 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 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 schoolyear. 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 Wilkimedia Commons.

Two Ways I Want to Be a Better Ministry Dad in 2026

There are many ways I could grow as a ministry dad. But alas, the Lord has not made us able to focus on very many things at the same time. So, here are two ways I’d like to focus on growing this year, based on wisdom that I’ve gleaned from other dads.

The first comes from some wise counsel I once received from a lay elder at our sending church. This brother works a full-time job at a car plant, but also regularly meets with members of the church for counseling and pastoral care. He and his wife also seem to have another new baby every time we go back to visit the US. Needless to say, they have their hands full. I once asked him how he balances these family and ministry commitments that often compete with one another. I found his answer extremely helpful.

“Once I’ve shared that I need to sacrifice some family time after work to care for a church member, my wife and I then agree on what time I’ll be back home. Then, the most loving thing I can do for my family is to keep my word and to be back when I say I will be. This allows my wife and family to share with me in the good sacrifice that I’ve been called to as a pastor, and prevents bitterness against the ministry from growing because they know I’ll be home when I say I will be.”

This pastor’s serious commitment to keep his commitments to his family is how he’s able to also lead them well in a sacrificial ministry lifestyle. It makes sense. How can a wife or family count the cost of a certain sacrifice if they’re never exactly sure what that cost is going to be? Or if a certain cost is agreed to, only to be repeatedly shifted later on? “Sorry, I know I said I’d be home at 7, but…” This is a great way to undermine trust and make space for bitterness to grow. On the other hand, if the cost is made clear (as much as is possible anyway), and the family knows from experience they can trust that dad will be home when he says he will be, that allows them to embrace that cost in a more healthy way and to more easily feel that they are genuinely top priority in dad’s heart. Yes, dad has a role that requires he regularly sacrifice some family time. But he demonstrates his care for us by reliably keeping his word.

Very wise, very practical, and very powerful.

The second way I want to grow has to do with something I want to get back to telling my kids more often. Research and experience have shown that ministry kids, whether missionary kids or pastors kids or others, tend to grow up ingesting the same sort of idea about themselves in relation to their parents’ work, even if their parents’ hearts or lives don’t necessarily correspond to that idea (though, sadly, the lives of some do). That idea is that their parents’ work is more important than they are.

I’m convinced that this belief is so prevalent and so harmful that it needs not only to be refuted in terms of lifestyle but also regularly refuted directly and verbally. As others have said, kids are wonderful observers, but terrible interpreters. We parents need to directly help them interpret what is actually happening in our hearts and lives when the ministry work seems to so often take priority. Again, ministry kids, across the board, tend to observe their parents lives and to come away with the internal message that they do not matter as much as the work does.

What might this kind of direct interpretation look like? Well, at bedtime or mealtimes or even randomly throughout the day, saying things like,

“Remember, you are more important to me than my work is.”

“Even though this is a really busy week, you are always a higher priority for me than my ministry is.”

“Do you ever feel like my work is more important to me than you are? Well, I want you to know that is not true. I would give it all up for your sake if that was what was needed.”

This is different than saying, “I love you.” It’s very possible for ministry kids to hear their parents tell them every day that they love them and to still feel like they are less important than the ministry. They genuinely believe that their parents love them. It just looks to them like their parents love the work even more.

Now that we’ve been back in Central Asia for a year and a half and the pace of our work seems to be significantly ramping up again, I want to get back to saying things to my kids like this more often. Several years ago, when we left the field for a couple of years for the sake of our family’s health, this became a major theme for us. I even wrote a poem for my kids and other parents about this (I’ll include it below). But I recognize that in the past couple years these direct sorts of statements have fallen a bit by the wayside. This year, I hope to bring them back.

I believe that these two things, this one practice and this one affirmation, will make me a better ministry dad in 2026. I welcome your prayers that I would grow in these areas: in keeping my commitments to my family and in explicit affirmations that they are, after God, the most important thing in my life.

If there are any other ministry dads out there (or working dads in general) that would be helped to grow in these areas as well, then I hope that this post might be an encouragement to you as well. Let us strive to keep our commitments to our families. Let us strive to affirm and tell them that they are more important to us than our work or ministry is. And in these ways, let us fight for the hearts of our children.

Here is the poem I mentioned earlier, written for younger children and so that any busy working dad or mom might read it for their kiddos, ministry parents included. You’ll notice that there are some verses, such as verse 6, that contain language getting at the particular costs of the missionary lifestyle.

May this next generation of ministry kids grow up knowing that their dads keep their word, and that they are indeed more important in their parents’ hearts than the ministry is. 

My Work Is Never More Important than You

Papas and Mamas have much work to do
The deadlines are many, the hours are few
The bills must be paid and mouths must be fed,
But I’ve got a secret that needs to be said 

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you 

At times, yes, I love all this work that I do 
It’s important and needed, and helps people too 
It can’t fill my heart though, way deep down inside 
The way that you can – you’re my real joy and pride 

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you 

Sometimes my work starts to make me feel bad 
And at dinner I’m quiet and not very glad 
But even when work means my forehead is scrunched
I haven’t stopped loving you ever so much 

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you 

At times I may shoo you right out of the room 
“I’m on a work call!” I might gesture or boom 
And though I seem bothered, or though I seem mad 
That very same moment, my insides feel sad  

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you

On my days off we can rest, laugh, and play!
But sometimes my work still shows up to invade 
A text or an email can pull me away
Interrupting the fun we were planning that day

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you

My work might cause changes, like leaving our home 
And saying goodbye to the friends we have known
I know that these changes can cost you a lot
And how they affect you weighs deep in my thoughts

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you

If I had to choose between my work and you
The choice would be clear as a cloudless sky blue
I’d surrender my job and give up my career 
For the sake of the ones I hold so very dear

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you 

Someday you’ll be big and have work of your own 
And projects to do and calls on your phone 
Yet when it comes to your kiddos, the same will be true 
And you'll say to them, just as I’m telling you 

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you 

Papas and Mamas have much work to do
The deadlines are many, the hours are few 		 
Bills must be paid and mouths must be fed,
But I’ve got a secret that needs to be said 

Hear this deep down now and know that it’s true
My work is never more important than you

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 schoolyear. 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.

Take a Sip of the Water, Ma’am

Airport rules can often feel arbitrary and absurd. They vary greatly from one airport to another and even from one trip to another through the same airport. Travelers come emotionally prepared to endure certain dehumanizing procedures only to be caught off-guard by airport staff who have unexpectedly changed things – and are now annoyed that you don’t already know what you’re supposed to do. 

Shoes on or shoes off when you go through the scanner? Passport only or boarding pass only, or both? To awkwardly look and attempt a smile at that little camera at the passport control booth or not? Bottles of water from the airport or the plane allowed into other parts of the airport or onto the plane? We try our best to keep our family hydrated in the parched land of 36,000 feet, but this last one and its ever-shifting yes, no, yes, yes, no!!! nature seems to always leave us scratching our heads. 

This past year, it even led to quite the standoff between my wife and one member of airport staff, a battle of wills that has now made it into our family travel lore. Here’s how it went down. 

We were getting off a flight from our Central Asian country and transiting through the Doha airport. This airport, like many in the Gulf region, is largely staffed not by Qataris but by workers from other countries. These professional SE Asians, S Asians, Africans, and others keep the airport masses efficiently humming along, often doing so with much more politeness than you’ll find at most American airports. Here, I recall a kind African lady who tried to convince us she could help us get out of the airport and to a city hotel during an unexpected 17-hour layover, even though this would have been illegal during those days of lingering pandemic restrictions. In the end, we opted not to take her up on her offer, a decision which had unexpected consequences of its own, involving matching luxury tracksuits of all things. 

Toward the end of the hot and dry flight, the flight attendants had passed out bottles of water to all of the passengers. Naturally, we assumed that bottles of water handed out on the plane, a plane of the flagship carrier of the airport we were headed to, would be fine to bring into the airport. After all, the whole no liquids thing is to prevent terrorists from bringing exploding liquids onto the plane. So, this time we didn’t tell our kids to chug their water lest there be none to be found for the next several hours. Instead, since we were about to disembark, we all just put our unopened or slightly-sipped water bottles into our carry-on bags. 

After a short trek from the plane to the transit area, we were met by an unexpected security scanner area. No big deal, we thought, as we put our carry-on bags onto the X-ray belt. But the respectful African man who was in charge of our line suddenly called my wife out in his thick Sub-Saharan English accent. 

“Do you have wata in yo bags, ma’am?” 

“Yes, they just gave us water on the plane.” 

“Take it out, please.” 

My wife proceeded to take out all of our bottles of water, which the man then lined up on the metal table after the X-ray machine. He then crossed his arms, staring at the water bottles suspiciously, then squinting his eyes at us. 

“They just now gave us water on the plane,” my wife explained, “And these ones are for our kids because there wasn’t much to drink during the flight. Do we need to throw them out? They’re from the plane.” 

“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“Take a sip of da wata,” he said again, pointing with his chin. 

It took both of us a moment to process the request. It seemed this airport security officer wanted my wife to take a sip of her water bottle to demonstrate that it wasn’t… poison?

Somewhat annoyed, my wife took a sip of her water bottle. Thankfully, she did not drop dead.

“Take anada sip of da wata, ma’am,” the man said next, nodding at the other water bottles. 

“Why?” my wife countered. 

“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am. Is fo yo children.” 

“Yes, these other bottles of water are for my children.” 

“Then take a sip of da wata, ma’am.” 

“Of each of them?” 

The man continued to stand there, insistently, waiting for my wife to prove like some kind of cup-bearer that our kids’ bottles of water from the plane were neither poisonous nor explosive. 

Again, we were struggling to understand the thought process behind all this. Was this normal procedure? I’ve been traveling through airports my entire life and had never before witnessed this type of ritual. But also, our kids are, in some ways, germophobes. Despite my earnest appeals to reason, they will not drink after someone else, even if it’s their mom taking a small sip from their water bottle. 

My wife, knowing this, and not a fan of unexpected pressurized situations like this one, was looking for a way out. 

“I’ll just throw them all away.” 

“No. Is fo yo children. Take anada sip of da wata.” 

“No. I’ll just throw them away.” 

“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am.” 

“No. I’ll throw them away.” 

“Is fo yo children.“

“…” 

I’m not exactly sure how long this exchange went on, with my wife and this airport security man staring each other down like some kind of battle of immovable ancient titans. 

Eventually, without breaking eye contact, my wife took a sip from each water bottle. I shushed our kids as they let out their germophobic protestations. Once again, my wife did not die, nor explode. And we finally moved past the security agent. 

At which point my wife defiantly threw the water bottles in the trash can. 

As we walked away and neared the Doha transit area with the creepy giant yellow teddy bear with a lamp coming out of its head, we tried to figure out what we had just witnessed. 

But the absurdity of it all was overtaking me. I leaned over to my wife, smiling. 

“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am. Is fo yo children,” I said, able to nail the accent because I’d heard the man say that phrase so many times.

She glared at me. I burst out laughing, as did the kids. Eventually, my wife cracked a smile as well. 

Were you to hang out with our family, you might hear this particular quote thrown out now and then. It’s been added to the extensive lineup of inside quotes always on hand, added to other classics like, “Goodbye boys, have fun stormin’ the cyastle!” (Princess Bride), “What abou’ them? They’re freeesh.” (The Two Towers), and “It’s a donkey bazaar” (Central Asian proverb). 

In light of the ever-shifting and often-dehumanizing procedures of air travel, it’s important to learn how to laugh at stuff like this. Why did that airport security man try to turn my wife into the sacrificial cupbearer of my family’s water bottles? I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand. But neither will he ever understand the legendary status he has now achieved in our family banter. 

“Take a sip of da wata ma’am. Is fo yo children.” 

Yes, African Doha airport water man. Your words will endure far beyond what you could have ever imagined. 

Happy New Year, friends! May your 2026 be a year full of the Lord’s kindness to you.

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 schoolyear. 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

My Sun – A Poem by a Local Believer

My Sun
by Shepherd H

They ask why I’m a Christian, ‘What for you has this Christ done?
Has he taken from your shoulders some heavy life burden?’
So I told them, just for once, to open hearts and open eyes
Said I, ‘Read a few verses from the Gospel of the Christ
Then yourselves you’ll sacrifice with both your soul and spirit 
And then from all deeds past embrace repentance and regret’
For Jesus Christ is living God of power without end 
And everything in heaven and the earth is in his hand
My idol worship thrown away, and my true God I found 
I know he is my God, without wav’ring, question, doubt 
Now, I’ve comfort worry-free, and Christ, light of my days 
The shining strength of Jesus is my sun, my wall, my shade

This is another poem by the late Shepherd H, Central Asian believer and elderly poet-turned-Christian. This poem focuses on how Christ has become the powerful center of Shepherd’s life, its very light and sun. When asked why he’s a Christian, Shepherd points his questioners to Bible, where he claims reading even a few verses is enough to cause radical repentance and self-sacrifice.

My Sun is another poem that exults in Jesus using some very Central Asian imagery. The sun is a major symbol of our people group, something that probably has roots in ancient Zoroastrianism, but which now is mainly expressive of the hope of freedom. What I’ve translated as ‘wall’ in this poem is a garden barrier referring more to privacy, beauty, and rest than to protection from enemies. And although the sun is a beloved symbol here, so is the shade. Our dry, high desert climate means you come to really appreciate the shade and how stepping into it during the summer can provide such instant relief. So much so that I’ve heard locals rank trees according to the quality of shade that they provide.

By calling the shining strength of Jesus his sun, wall, and shade, Shepherd is proclaiming that Jesus is his light, his hope for freedom, his rest, his covering, his beauty, his relief, and his deliverance.

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. 

Praise God, one of the international churches in our region got a pastor! But there’s still another church looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ 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 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.

*Names have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash

The Good Gift of Intercultural Humor

“Three men walk into a cave: An American, a Japanese man, and a Wermahi.*

The American calls out, “Hello!” 

And the cave answers back, “‘elloo, ‘elloo, ‘elloo!” 

The Japanese man calls out, “Konnichiwa!” 

And the cave answers back, “‘ichiwaa, ‘ichiwaa, ‘ichiwaa!” 

The Wermahi man calls out, “Khawneshi!”* 

And the cave answers back, “Whaaaat????”

This joke was recently shared, to great effect, with a group of local men in my living room. What made it even better was that the one telling the joke was himself ethnically Wermahi*, a member of one of our minority language groups. The joke is, of course, so funny to other locals because the Wermahi language is so different and unintelligible to the other language groups around it, even though they all consider themselves members of the same regional ethnicity. 

This great difference between the nearby Wermahi language and the language spoken in Poet City* and Caravan City* is simply an amusing fact of life for people here, something for members of both communities to laugh about. As it should be. God has unexpectedly brought about many good things through the original scattering of languages (and the resulting cultures) that happened at Babel. Undoubtedly, one of those good gifts is the existence of intercultural humor. 

I recently reread the first book in C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, and was struck by Dr. Ransom’s observations about when the three intelligent species of the planet Malacandra got together. This kind of mixing of the species seemed especially to draw out the humor of each one. It’s as if there was something about the contrast between the different, yet equal species and their distinct kinds of humor that somehow resulted in more joy and laughter when they mixed than when each species was merely living among its own people. 

This reminded me about how downright hilarious intercultural differences can be. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, pick up a copy of Daniel Nayeri’s memoir Everything Sad Is Untrue, and you’ll quickly see what I mean. Some of the funniest writers and comedians out there are third culture kids, those who have grown up in the midst of multiple cultures, and so have a particular ability to both understand and play with the differences of each. Even when the cultural differences are as slight as those between Americans and Canadians, these differences can be leveraged to hilarious effect, as when Jim Gaffigan does a standup routine about the Canadian map. 

It seems that God has designed us to simply find certain kinds of differences funny. And while this can often be twisted by sin and used to laugh at others not like us, the core experience itself must be good, something that can be redeemed so that we are laughing with one another about our differences. My Wermahi friend was a good example of this, as was a Peruvian brother who preached this past week at our international church and illustrated his sermon with a story about time differences. 

“I arrived at the meeting the Germans invited me to ten minutes after the start time. For my culture, I was doing great! I was early! But when I arrived, I was shocked to find out the devotional had already finished. Apparently, Germans expect you to arrive ten minutes before the meeting time so that they can start exactly on time. But my Central Asian friends? When I ask them what time I should expect them for dinner, they look at me strange! Like, ‘Why do you need to know a time?’ Because in this culture, it’s always the right time to receive a guest.” 

The congregation when this brother preached was made up of attendees from about twenty-five different countries, including locals, all laughing good-naturedly at these true and genuinely funny time differences between cultures. Once again, this is as it should be. 

Strange things are afoot in Western culture these days. The pendulum seems to be swinging hard away from some of the self-censoring and self-righteous political correctness and back into territory where joking about our cultural differences is not so taboo anymore, even for majority-culture White folk. I welcome the healthy parts of this, even as I know that some will take it too far, back to the kinds of jokes that communicate that differences imply inferiority. But as with food or alcohol, so with intercultural humor. “Men can go wrong with wine and women,” Luther famously said. “Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?” The potential for abuse is no reason to ban a good gift. Rather, the key is for Christians to model how that good gift can be properly enjoyed for God’s glory. 

How can we be sure that our intercultural humor is healthy and helpful, an enjoyment of a good gift, rather than a sneaky dig at someone we feel we’re superior to? Well, can you tell that same joke in the presence of those from that culture and have them laughing as well? If you’re not sure, you’re probably better off not sharing it. Here, as in so many things, genuine friendship with those from other cultures makes all the difference. There are things I have learned that Central Asians find funny about themselves, such as their traditional giant parachute pants. Then there are other things they are aware of, but not yet ready to joke about, like their penchant for incessant selfie-taking. We’ve learned it’s best to follow their lead on what aspects of culture they’re ready to offer up as the butt of good jokes. 

Individuals are like this, too, and as is so often the case, culture is functioning here a lot like group personality, including the same kind of foibles and inconsistencies. Why can a man laugh at a joke about his belly but get embarrassed by a joke about his hair? Why do Americans get slightly offended by a joke about how much unhealthy food we eat, but can laugh at a joke about our comparative unwillingness to learn other languages? (What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American!). These inconsistencies are a bit odd, but they are real. We do well to watch out for them. 

One other warning when it comes to intercultural humor. In general, keep the jokes nice and clear. Humor is hard to translate, as a rule. But sarcasm? Not only hard to translate, but often downright unintelligible or offensive. Saying the opposite of what you mean for some kind of comedic effect is hard to pull off well in your own language and culture, let alone in someone else’s. Slapstick humor about things like fridges falling out of the sky tends to do well. Jokes dependent on wordplay or sarcasm usually end up as duds, at best. As my wife recently pointed out regarding sarcasm in texts, humor is dependent on shared context. You either need to tell translated jokes that have relatively universal content, or you need to know enough about the local context in order to play with its realities and quirkiness. 

As with all humor, believers need to run it through the filter of Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Is the intent of that intercultural joke to build the other person up, to share something fit for the occasion, to give the hearer grace through the good gift of laughter? If so, then fire away. But still pay attention because the effect of the joke may still end up an intercultural dumpster fire even if the intent of it was good and Christian at the start. 

As with the fictional alien species of Malacandra, so with the different peoples of the real world. There is something about when we mix that does and should lead to lots of good shared laughter. It seems that Babel not only gave us thousands of languages with which to eternally praise God, but also thousands of humorous differences from one another as well. And if these make great fodder for jokes now, just imagine what we’ll get to do with them in eternity. 

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. 

Praise God, one of the international churches in our region got a pastor! But there’s still another church looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ 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 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.

*Names have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash

Even Their Poets Are Preachers

This week, I witnessed a part of the local culture I had never seen before. A poetry battle. 

About twelve of us were sitting around a campfire on a mountainside that overlooked the distant lights of Caravan City. It was coming toward the end of the evening. We had grilled and eaten skewered pieces of chicken, munched on sunflower seeds, and drunk our chai and Nescafé. Already, some of the men, thinking of work in the morning, were asking if it would be time to go soon. 

A request by one of the men present to swap riddles and jokes had ultimately foundered upon the rocks of attempted translation from one language to another, something this particular group of guys keeps trying, even though the results are usually rather anticlimactic. Nothing like dropping what you think is a strong punchline only to be met with blank or confused looks, silence, or worse, a few polite chuckles. 

I did make one successful joke in the course of the evening, when the men had started up a hearty rendition of a favorite childhood song here, which goes something like, 

I’m a pig; you’re a pig; hey, all of us are pigs!

I told them to hold on and start over because I wanted to record the song for the sake of ‘the future generations.’ This caused a surprising outburst of laughter among all the men. 

“For the sake of future generations! That’s a good one! Hahahaha!’ 

Alas, my funniest joke of the evening wasn’t even one I was really attempting to make. But when the proverbial blind squirrel finds a nut, he is proud of himself nevertheless. 

Shortly after this, one man, a young journalist, told us he’d like to read us a poem he’d written. 

He pulled it up on his phone as the rest of the circle of men quieted down and leaned in. Unlike much of Western culture, our Central Asian locals are still very awake to the beauty and power of poetry, especially the men. But what I was about to witness highlighted this for me in a whole new way. 

Still seated, our cookout poet sat up as straight as he could in his camping chair and puffed out his chest. With one hand holding his phone out so he could read it and the other hand partially lifted in front of him, he began dropping rhythmic lines about his people’s history and long struggle for freedom. His raised hand moved up and down to emphasize the rhyming end of each line, a gesture that was followed by growing affirmations from the circle of men, a sort of ‘amening’ of each statement made. 

The intensity, emotion, and volume of the poem and the affirmations grew as the poem progressed, finishing with a climactic final rhyme and chorus of applause. Even though I had only gotten half of the meaning of the poem, it was easy to feel the powerful effect of this kind of poetic oratory. 

But it wasn’t over. Another man on the other side of the circle cleared his throat and shifted in his camping chair, 

“Friends,” he announced, “I have an answer to that!” 

What proceeded from those present was the sort of noises men in all cultures make when a challenger is announced, plus more applause. 

Apparently, the first poem had not only been patriotic, but also colored with loyalty to one of the two dominant political parties/families of our region. This other man was loyal to the other party/family and was about to drop some partisan lines of his own. 

His poem progressed much the way the first one had. Similar authoritative body language. Similar expressions of approval after particularly good rhythms and rhymes, and a climactic crash of louder verse and applause at the end. 

The two of them went back and forth like this four or five times. Like a rap battle, the volume of the crowd’s response to each poem seemed to be the gauge of which one was winning. In the end, to me, it looked like a draw. 

The atmosphere of our little campfire was now more alive than it had been all evening, and the rest of us now had the opportunity to share any favorite lines of verse that we had either written or memorized. I was thankful that one of the local believers bravely shared some lines of Christian poetry he’d recently written, since many of those present were not believers. I shared the one verse of local poetry I’ve ever memorized, one I’d once learned back in Poet City from a taxi driver. 

A wish for the days of homemade naan
In a thousand homes, a pilgrim only one
Now for all, "pilgrimmy pilgrim" is claimed
But pilgrims they're not, nor their bread e'en homemade

Once again, the applause I received for this very small segment of a poem against Islamic pharasaism was very warm, and probably much more than my lackluster delivery deserved. 

As we drove home, I asked one of the local believers with us about the poetry exchange we had witnessed that night. I told him that was the first time I’d seen it. 

“Oh yes,” he said, “We have that in our culture, though we don’t do it as much anymore. Poetry battles. We also have proverb battles. And song battles too.” 

I had once seen some YouTube videos of some local song battles, but I found it curious that, after almost a decade living in this culture, I had never seen a poetry battle like this before. I asked the other foreigner who was with us that night, and he hadn’t either. It seemed to be yet another gap in our knowledge of the local culture. 

Over the last number of months, I’ve continued to chew on how most missionaries here think that preaching, monologues by leaders, and skillful, authoritative oratory are foreign, Western things. As I’ve written before, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Our local culture has great respect for and takes great pleasure in skillful public oratory of all kinds. Yet this great disconnect persists, somehow, and the majority of missionaries remain convinced that informal group discussions are the thing that is truly local and contextual, and preaching and an old-fashioned and ineffective Western form. 

I mused on this as we drove down the mountain at midnight. As it turns out, locals recite even their poems as if they’re preaching. No, recite is the wrong verb. What I saw during the poetry battle was not recitation, it was proclamation. Each poet was aiming to persuade the minds and hearts of his hearers of the truth and beauty of his message. The tone and posture of these poets were that of crafted conviction. Or, as Martin Lloyd Jones once said of preaching – logic on fire. 

Through local eyes, it makes the way we Westerners casually lead our Bible discussions look limp, spineless, like we don’t really believe what we’re saying. Why do we missionaries persist in presenting the word of God like we do when locals present even their private poems with so much more authority and conviction? 

So much for preaching being a foreign thing. No, once again, I must conclude that, here in Central Asia, preaching is everywhere. After all, even their poets are preachers. 

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. 

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, and our kids’ 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 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

Conservation via Catastrophe

[Mesopotamia] contains the site of the earliest known writing, in the lower reaches of the Euphrates valley. But in its western zone, in the coastal cities of Syria, it was also the first to make the radical simplification from hieroglyphs that denoted words and syllables to a short alphabet that represented simple sounds. The political effects of this were massive. For the first time, literacy could spread beyond the aristocratic scribal class, the people who had leisure in childhood to learn the old, complicated, system; positions of power and influence throughout the Assyrian empire were then opened to a wider social range.

The area also contains the first known museums and libraries, often centralised, multilingual institutions of the state. But by an irony of fate which has favoured the memory of this clay-based society, its documents were best preserved by firing, most simply through conflagrations in the buildings in which they were held, a circumstance that was not uncommon in its tempestuous history. These catastrophes were miracles of conservation, archiving whole libraries in situ, on occasion with even their classification intact, and have materially helped the rapid reading of much unknown history in our era.

-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34

Countless written sources from ancient history have been lost because the libraries where they were stored went up in flames. The tragic losses of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad come to mind as a couple of such catastrophes. What might we have known that is now lost had these libraries survived to pass on their priceless knowledge?

It’s interesting, then, to realize that it’s because even older libraries burnt down that many of their records were preserved. When clay, not papyrus, vellum, or paper, was the medium of preserving written records, ancient fires actually had the effect of helping to preserve some of these records for future discovery. Twice-baked clay buried in the dry climate of the Middle East tends to last a very long time.

This is especially relevant to Christians because so many of these ancient cuneiform records have gone on to confirm the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible. Just today, I read about a newly discovered cuneiform fragment in Jerusalem. This ancient record from the late First Temple period refers to a payment the king of Jerusalem owed to the Assyrian king. This discovery aligns very well with the Old Testament’s claims that later Judean kings came under Assyrian vassalage.

There are many parts of the world where the climate does not allow for the same sort of preservation of undiscovered artifacts over thousands of years. Perhaps part of God’s plan in centering his revelation in the broader Middle East was because of these unique possibilities for conservation – even conservation via catastrophe.

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. 

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. 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

When to Put Salt in the Guest’s Shoes

“Guests are like fish. After three days, they begin to stink.” 

I’m not sure when I first heard this saying, but it sheds light on an experience that seems to take place in every society. Sometimes guests come to stay. And then end up overstaying. Every culture has these sorts of guests who stay, and stay, and stay. And every culture, at some point, develops strategies to try and get rid of them. I’ve heard that some villages in our corner of Central Asia would secretly put a little bit of salt in the shoes of overstaying guests. Allegedly, the salt would somehow trigger a desire in the visitors to depart back to where they had come from. I didn’t know about this practice back when we had a local friend unexpectedly move in with us for nine days. But had I known of it, I just may have tried it. 

Jonathan* was a quirky believer who lived several hours to the south of Poet City*. He had come to faith while a university student in Poet City, and I had gotten to know him during my gap year on the field back when I was a single 20-year-old. To his great credit, Jonathan persevered in his faith when he moved back to his conservative desert city, even though there wasn’t even so much as a secret house gathering there for believers. To this day, there still isn’t. Instead, for his encouragement, Jonathan would travel up to Poet City every few months to worship with believers, to hang out with friends from his college days, and to ask around about jobs that might allow him to move. Understandably, Jonathan hoped to one day live in the more progressive Poet City and to escape the stifling heat and even more stifling Islamic culture of his hometown. 

So, during our first year on the field, when Jonathan contacted me, told me he was coming to town, and asked if he could spend the night at our house, I quickly agreed. Locals in our area are traditionally expected to extend honorable hospitality at the drop of a hat. We weren’t set up super well for hosting overnight guests in our open-concept two-bedroom flat, but we could figure something out for a night or two. After all, we thought, this would be a good cultural experience for us as a new family on the field. 

What I didn’t think to ask myself was why Jonathan was asking for help from us, of all people, brand new foreigners, when he had a decent network of college friends and believers that he already knew in the city. Was there some reason others were not willing to host this seemingly kind and respectable man? No, we didn’t think to ask these questions that more experienced missionaries might bring up. My wife and I simply wanted to try to do what we thought was the honorable contextual thing and host a friend who asked to stay with us. 

On the first evening, I picked Jonathan up from where he was hanging out at a popular row of teahouses and brought him back to our place for supper. Our meal together went well. Jonathan was peculiar in personality, oddly swinging between being very polite and being somewhat blunt. Yet overall, he was a kind and enjoyable dinner guest. 

After supper, Jonathan asked me if I could take him out to buy some peanut butter. At the time, this Western grocery item was only present in the bigger cities, and not where Jonathan lived. But apparently, Jonathan really loved him some peanut butter. So, we went peanut butter hunting and then went out to drink some tea with some of his college friends. 

Jonathan had come to town during the peak of the summer heat. We only had one air conditioner that could work at night on our 10 amps of neighborhood generator electricity. This was the unit in our master bedroom. Because of this, we made the summer nights more manageable for our little family by setting up a fan to blow the cooler air from our room into the kids’ room that was directly next to ours, the air-conditioned air being pushed from room to room through the open doors that met at a corner. 

That first night, we set Jonathan up in our living room as best we could, apologizing that all we could offer him for the night heat in that more private part of the house was a fan. However, since Jonathan was from a city far to the south of us that is much hotter than Poet City, we thought he should pass the night comfortably. We said goodnight and all turned in for the night. So far, so good. We went to bed feeling like decent hosts.

However, it wasn’t long before we heard some loud noises that sounded like porcelain being knocked around. My wife and I sat up in bed and looked questioningly at one another. What was that sound? I crept out of our room to find Jonathan, one leg stretched high, pant legs rolled up, washing his socks and a foot in the porcelain sink outside our little toilet and shower rooms – the same sink where we washed our hands and brushed our teeth. He was doing this so aggressively that the little sink was rocking back and forth on its porcelain stand. This, of course, was what was causing all the midnight racket. 

I thought this was odd. My wife thought it was downright gross.

“Tell him he can wash his feet in the shower room!” She whispered to me urgently when I told her what was happening.  

“Tomorrow. I’ll tell him tomorrow,” I assured her, still trying to make sense of the odd midnight scene I had just witnessed.

We settled back in to try to get to sleep when we were again woken up by the loud clanging of our roof door opening. It appeared that Jonathan had gone up to the flat roof to smoke a late-night cigarette. Smoking is still very common in this part of the world, even among believers, so we didn’t think too much of it. But as the hours passed, we noticed that he seemed to go up to the roof many times for many more late-night cigarettes. He also made what seemed like dozens of trips to the bathroom, which was right next to our bedroom. Eventually, sometime in the early hours of the morning, he at last settled down.  

The next the morning, we asked Jonathan how he had slept. 

“I slept very poorly, due to the heat.” 

Huh, I thought to myself, that’s a little more blunt than I was expecting. And strange that it affected him so much, given how locals are more comfortable in the heat than we are.

“Sorry about that, brother. We heard you up in the night a lot and wondered if it might be because of the heat.” 

“I was also feeling some indigestion, however, from the dinner you served me last night.” 

Wow, I thought to myself again, blunt again. Even in the non-hospitality-oriented West, most guests would at least state this indirectly and let the hosts put the pieces together. 

“Sorry again, our food is maybe a little different from what your stomach is used to.”

I shot a glance at my wife, who was doing her best to wrangle our toddlers and their breakfast demands while also laying out a generous spread of breakfast foods for our guest. Jonathan didn’t seem upset necessarily, just direct and a little condescending. Not unlike a teacher who felt it his duty to correct his students when they gave an incorrect answer. He was a teacher, in fact, newly hired at a private language institute in his hometown.

“Jonathan, would you like yogurt, or eggs, maybe an omelet?” My wife graciously offered. 

“No thanks, just peanut butter, thank you.” 

I saw my wife’s shoulders droop just a little as she realized her generous breakfast spread was all for naught.

After his quick breakfast of peanut butter and a little bit of local bread, Jonathan went outside for another smoke. 

“Well… that was a little rougher than I was expecting,” I said to my wife. 

“It’s okay,” my wife said. “Glad we could host him. Do you know what time he’s heading back to his city today?” 

“No idea, but I’ll try to find out indirectly when I drop him off in the bazaar.” 

To ask Jonathan directly, of course, would imply that we were not happy to host him as long as necessary, and would be very shameful. 

So, when Jonathan and I were close to the market, I tried to get the relevant info out of him. 

“So, what are your plans for today?” 

“Well, I have some shopping to do in the bazaar, then I’ll be meeting up with some friends. Could you pick me up for dinner tonight? 

“Um, yes… yes I can. So, will you be staying longer in Poet City?”

“Oh yes, yes, of course, I don’t want to go back home yet. I am looking for a job. Is it alright if I stay with you again tonight?” 

“Of course it is!” I answered, trying my best to play the honorable and generous host. But something in my stomach told me that we might have gotten a bit more than we’d bargained for in agreeing to host Jonathan in the first place. 

We went out to eat that night and paid for Jonathan’s meal. Strangely, he didn’t argue with me to pay for the bill, as would be customary when friends go out to eat together. I took note, but mostly wrote this off as some dynamic of hosting that we hadn’t learned about yet. 

When we got back to our place, we offered to set Jonathan up in our kids’ room so that he could have the cold air from the one AC unit blown in via our fan setup. Our two-year-old and four-year-old would sleep on floor mattresses in our room. This would mean closer quarters all around, but our family and Jonathan would still have at least a little bit of privacy since we were in different rooms. I was also sure to point out the shower room foot washing options for Jonathan.

However, just after we had gone to bed, Jonathan soon began his same sink foot washing, rooftop smoking, and bathroom routine. After what seemed like hours of this, we finally drifted off, praying for God’s help to be gracious hosts. 

At some point in the middle of the night, my wife shook me awake and pointed. There, on the floor and poking into our bedroom door, was Jonathan’s head, fast asleep and snoring. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. Even though the kids’ room was almost as cool as ours, Jonathan must have decided that he needed to be as close as possible to the coolest air, so he moved his sleeping pallet so that he was sleeping with the bottom half of his body in the kids’ room, his upper half just outside the doorframes, and his head stuck just inside our room. He was definitely asleep, but it was a bit unnerving nonetheless to have his head, well, just there, poking into our bedroom. 

The next morning, however, Jonathan seemed downright chipper. We, on the other hand, were starting to feel the toll of hosting. Still, we managed to have a pleasant (simple this time) breakfast together and to get some helpful advice from Jonathan about the local language. 

Second day, same routine. My wife asked me to find out Jonathan’s plans. I tried to do so indirectly. Jonathan ended up asking to stay with us another night. He continued his peculiar nighttime habits, including sleeping with his head just inside our door. My wife and I slept fitfully and woke feeling worse than the day before. 

This went on for nine nights.

Nine. Long. Nights. 

My wife and I soldiered on, but soon began to feel not unlike like Gandalf after his deadly battle with the Balrog.

“Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time…”

Eventually, even Jonathan began to pick up on the fact that we were struggling to remain energetic and joyful hosts. 

On day eight, at breakfast, he went into teacher mode again.

“You know, in my culture, it’s very important that you reassure a guest over and over that they are not causing any trouble to you. Otherwise, they may begin to feel insecure about the warmth of their welcome.” 

My wife, fearing her emotions might be displayed a little too obviously on her face, made a quick about-turn for the kitchen.

I took a deep breath and tried to answer in some way that was still kind, but which perhaps hinted at the fact that Jonathan’s welcome was indeed no longer as warm as it once was. 

“Yes… um… thank you for the advice. That’s good to know… Will you be needing a ride to the bazaar today?”  

By this point, we were getting desperate. We needed to find an honorable way out of this situation – and fast. Our little family was at the end of our rope. Our kids were exhausted from sleeping on the floor of our room. My wife and I were exhausted from having them in our room every night – not to mention the nightly presence of Jonathan’s head. We were burning through our meager finances with all of the extra food costs we were incurring. And Jonathan continued to not offer to help with any of these costs, despite regularly asking to eat out together. 

Our guest also showed no indication that he was planning on going back home anytime soon. He kept saying that he was hoping to find a job, but he was not doing any actual job searching. It slowly became clear that he was, in fact, waiting for me to find him a job and a place to rent. Until that happened, it seemed his plan was to just extend his stay with us. 

Clearly, whatever Jonathan’s assumptions were about this whole arrangement, they were wildly different from ours. We just thought we were hosting a believer for a couple of nights. But somehow, we had unwittingly become some kind of patrons now responsible for finding work and housing for our peculiar house guest. We were all for helping a brother out in reasonable ways, but we were in no position to find him long-term work and housing.

Jonathan didn’t seem to be picking up on the many ways we were trying to indirectly and honorably communicate that even though we were hypothetically ready to host him as long as needed, we were not actually able to host him any longer. Even when our indirect communication started becoming more and more direct, he still wasn’t getting it. No, we realized, we’d need to find some way to kick our guest out and still save some face for all parties involved. 

The answer came through a teammate. They were shocked to learn that a local had actually stayed with us for over a week. This was not normal, even for locals hosting other locals. Something was off. This teammate suggested that our family take a trip out of town, and thereby force our guest to figure out different lodging. Thankfully, we did have a trip we had been needing to take to a different city for some government business. By bumping it up a little, we had found a way out. In our local culture, having guests is the kind of thing you can use to get out of almost anything. But if you need to get out of having guests, apparently, having a trip is the magic escape key.

Jonathan did not take the news of our departure very well, seeming at last to understand that we really weren’t holding out on him and we really couldn’t help him in the way he had hoped. He told me that he didn’t have enough money to afford more than a couple of nights at a cheap bazaar hotel and that none of his friends were willing to host him. So, we helped him pay for a night or two at a little hole-in-the-wall hotel. 

As I dropped him off late at night, I felt bad for Jonathan. He seemed pretty down. Things were still respectful between us overall, which I was thankful for. Jonathan still vacillated in his speech between a strange bluntness and an odd propriety. But he did, in the end, say the things he was supposed to say as a guest. We also did our best to tell him how honored we were to host him – even if we were by that point on the verge of tears of utter exhaustion. 

That night, in the absence of feet in the sink, 3 am smoke breaks, and snoring heads poking in the door, my family slept like the dead. 

Looking back, I’m still not exactly sure what to make of Jonathan’s stay with us that summer. Perhaps he was simply wired to miss the normal social cues governing most local hospitality? Perhaps we were sending the wrong signals? It was hard to say, but the fact that he couldn’t find any local friends to host him was an indicator that it wasn’t just us. It seems that Jonathan had overstayed his welcome with others before as well. That meant that he was either of the type who had learned to abuse the local culture of hospitality, or that perhaps something else was going on that meant that, even though he was a local, he didn’t really know (or sense) the rules.

Believe it or not, we did have Jonathan stay with us a couple more times after all of this. But I had learned my lesson and was clear to tell him a certain number of nights we could host, one or two, and to set expectations accordingly. This sort of approach seemed to go much better.

And I think we would still host him if he ever came to Caravan City, albeit with some fear and trepidation. And boundaries. Very clear boundaries.

In all this, we learned that in a culture that extends lavish offers of (often unsustainable) hospitality, there will always be people who, wittingly or unwittingly, take advantage of this. Finding kind and honorable ways out of this is therefore a top priority for all who attempt to extend these offers that most take hypothetically. Because some will take you literally.

When that happens, you just might have to put some salt in their shoes. Or, in case that doesn’t work (and it probably won’t), you can always do as we did – and make an honorable run for it.

*Names changed for security

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. 

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. 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.com