This brief video from the Great Commission Council puts forward a solid definition of one of the more fought-over aspects of missions: contextualization. It’s a huge topic, but this definition is a great place to start – Contextualization is the task of making the message of the gospel comprehensible to all cultures and contexts.
In case you’re wondering, each of these GCC teaser videos will also soon be followed with a published article going deeper into the topic. Many of these articles will be rolling out in the next few months. We got to be a part of the discussions that led to these articles and got to read the rough drafts – and they are so good. I can’t wait for these thoughtful and biblical resources to be made available for the churches and missionaries.
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For about a year when we lived in our old stone house next to the bazaar, we also owned a black German shepherd mix named Stella. Stella was an energetic and excitable young dog, but overall pretty good about not barking unnecessarily. In a culture that has only recently warmed to the idea of dogs as pets, this was something that we (and our neighbors) were grateful for, especially since one family up the street kept a couple of small dogs on their roof that yapped at night for hours on end.
But there was one thing that would make Stella go positively berserk with barking – when a street cat would perch up on our high courtyard wall, smugly taunting her. The worst part about this was that these evil felines liked to do this at 5 am. My wife and I were up enough in the night as it was with diabetic lows and electricity outages. We did not need to be woken up by Stella as well because some cat thought it was amusing to watch her bark and run in circles.
After several early mornings of running out into our courtyard yelling and throwing bathroom shoes at the offending kitty (and hoping the neighbors didn’t see), I decided that there must be some more efficient way to train these cats out of this sinister behavior. So, I decided to get an Airsoft gun. In this way, I would be able to easily give these cats a small sting they would remember, yet without causing any real injury to them. Plus, I could do this from the comfort of my bedroom window, which looked out onto the front courtyard wall which the cats so enjoyed perching on. For those not familiar with Airsoft guns, they are toy guns that shoot small plastic BBs – fast enough to be accurate and to sting, but slow enough to not break the skin.
We were soon to be in the US for some training, so I hatched my plan to deal with the neighborhood cats. I went on Amazon and found an Airsoft pistol, bought it, and shipped it to our US mailing address. I saw that it was advertised as having the same appearance and weight as a real Glock handgun, except for a bright orange cylinder protruding from its chamber, but I didn’t really care so much about the appearance as much as if it would be accurate and powerful enough to do defend both Stella’s sanity and our early morning slumber. Once I purchased the thing, I didn’t think anything more of it.
Several weeks later, we were en route back to our Central Asian country when I was stopped by the security personnel as our bags were scanned at the Istanbul airport. One officer came over to me, holding up the toy pistol, still encased in its new packaging.
“Do you have letter for this gun?” He asked me in thickly accented English. “You need letter to bring gun in baggage through Turkey.”
“No, sir,” I replied, “I don’t have a letter because it’s not a real gun. It’s a toy, see?” And I proceeded to point out the bright orange front.
“Yes,” he replied. “I know it’s toy. But why do you not have letter?”
“Because it’s a toy, not a real gun.”
The officer looked at me, looked at the Airsoft gun, looked back at me.
“But it looks like real gun.”
“Yes, but it’s not. It’s a toy. I understand I need a letter for a real gun. But this is not a real gun. It’s a toy.”
“Yes, I know it’s toy. But you need letter for gun.”
“For a toy?”
“No, not for toy, but for gun.”
By now another couple of security personnel had come over and begun breaking the gun out of its very stubborn plastic casing. I turned to my wife to tell her that this might take a little while.
My wife, for her part, was looking straight-up yellow.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Um… no… I’m super nauseous. I think I need to find a trashcan fast.”
“Oh no. I don’t see any trashcans anywhere, or bathrooms. And I think I might be stuck with these guys for a bit here.”
Our taxi ride to the airport had been relatively short, only twenty minutes or so. But because of this, the driver seemed a little upset at getting a lower fare than usual for an airport run and had driven the windy roads from the Black Sea coast to the airport like a man with a death wish.
“Sir, you need letter for this gun!” the officer continued. I turned away from my wife for a second to carry on my bizarre conversation with the security man.
“I don’t understand, this is a toy. I need a special letter for a toy gun? I just got this to keep the cats away, that’s all, it’s not a real gun…”
“Watch the kids, I’ll be behind that plant!” my wife blurted out as she jogged, roll of trash bags in hand, over to a large potted plant next to a departures screen nearby.
For the next several minutes, I tried to keep debating with the security officers while keeping one eye on my prone-to-wander offspring, and one eye on the figure leaning over, face in trash bag, behind the tall plant.
The officers had by now taken the toy gun apart and were suspiciously inspecting every aspect of it. For my part, I was ready to give up the gun as a lost cause, yet another casualty of the whims or confusions of airport security like so many other harmless items over the years. I could figure out another solution for the 5 am felines. Maybe I could get a powerful water gun? Or a laser pointer? Regardless, I realized that the family was falling apart fast, so, priorities.
“Sir, it’s okay, I don’t need the gun. I have to go help my wife behind that plant over there.”
“No, you can take gun, toy gun, now,” the officer said suddenly, handing me the Airsoft Glock. “But next time you need letter!”
I thanked the officer profusely, shoved the gun into my bag, and corralled the kids and the rolling suitcases that had begun drifting away on some invisible tide. We made our way over to my wife. She was still quite pale, staring off into the distance while holding a tied-up black trash bag in her hand.
“Lentil soup,” she said. “I never want to have Turkish lentil soup again.”
Bright yellow, salty lentil soup is a staple dish in Turkish cuisine. Up until that point, our family had always quite liked it. So, I hoped my wife’s very understandable resolution at that moment would ultimately prove to be a temporary thing. But I decided to keep these thoughts to myself.
“Well, praise God for that plant I guess. And especially for that roll of trash bags.”
Indeed, after enough instances of scrambling to help motion-sick kiddos who were suddenly regurgitating their last batch of plane food, we had eventually learned that mom should keep a small roll of trash bags in her carry-on at all times.
“Mmhm. Now, help me find a trash can.”
We wandered down the cavernous check-in area looking for somewhere we could discreetly deposit the remains of my wife’s lunch.
“They let me keep the Airsoft gun!” I told her. “But it was close. I shouldn’t have risked it, this thing looks and feels too much like a real gun. Hopefully, it ends up actually working.”
Eventually, we found a trash can, regrouped, and then went to stand in several more long lines before getting on our final flight home.
Later that week, back in our old stone house, I was woken up early in the predawn glow by Stella, once again losing her mind and barking loud enough to call down every neighbor’s angry cry of “Mud of the earth upon my head!”
I grabbed the Airsoft gun, cocked it, and gently opened up our window.
Sure enough, there on the wall was one of the street cats, staring blankly down at poor Stella, casually flicking her tail in an obvious act of cool condescension.
Not today, cruel kitty. I aimed the toy gun and pulled the trigger. A blast of air sent the small yellow BB barreling toward the cat, ricocheting off the wall right next to her tail. I heard a satisfyingly panicked yowl. And in an instant, the cat was gone, off to spread the word that there was a new sheriff in town, one with a strange new weapon so dangerous it had barely made it through airport security.
Stella whined and sauntered off. I smiled, closed the window, and got back under the covers. Things would be different going forward. With the help of the Airsoft pistol, we were taking dominion over the street cats, or at least keeping them away so we could get a little bit more precious sleep. Now if we could only figure out what to do about the pack of street dogs that also liked to come by our gate early in the morning and get into shouting matches with Stella.
I lay in bed, chewing on the lessons that had been learned.
Lesson learned #1: Don’t try to bring toy guns through airport security that look and feel almost exactly like real guns.
Lesson learned #2: If you do get said toy gun through airport security, then all you have to do is scare the cats with near misses in order for it to be effective.
Lesson learned #3: Never forget that small roll of trash bags in your carry-on when traveling internationally. You never know when the plane food, Turkish taxi drivers, or lentil soup might strike.
Lesson learned #4: If all else fails, find yourself an airport plant.
And with that, I drifted off to sleep… until the pack of street dogs came by.
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The goal of language learning and language use for any missionary should be effective spiritual communication. The goal is not the language itself, but rather faith that comes by hearing. Because of this, language is the necessary tool, the vehicle by which a missionary is able to achieve effective communication.
Now, if you have been reading this blog for a while you will know that I think language itself is a stunning and wonderful thing – but that it’s also a limited thing. Humans in general are not usually awake to the wonder of language. And many missionaries don’t learn the local language nearly well enough because doing so can be such hard work. However, many missionaries also like to fight about language, elevating language learning and language usage choices to the level of dogma, seemingly believing that it will make or break a ministry or church planting movement if you don’t get it perfect.
But because we love language and yet are also very aware of its limitations, we are language pragmatists. This posture means we will happily use whatever language makes for the deepest understanding of the truth we are trying to communicate. In this posture of language pragmatism, I believe we have a precedent in God himself, who in the Bible happily switches from Hebrew to Aramaic to Greek and also throws in 80-some Persian loan words for good measure. In this, the God of the Bible is refreshingly contrasted with the deity of Islam who rigidly confines the language of heaven and prayer to one earthly tongue – 7th century Arabic – and demands that all his followers do the same now and in the life to come. As if the weight of eternity could possibly be borne by one human tongue alone.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This posture of language pragmatism doesn’t make us care less about language learning. It actually makes us more serious about our study of a given tongue. Again, when the goal is effective communication of God’s truth, then you can’t help but notice when the majority of the population isn’t being reached by the global, regional, or trade languages being used by most Christian efforts among your people group. These other tongues might be good for reaching a subset of the population who have second or third-language proficiency in them. But if they are ineffective in carrying gospel truth to those inner places of the heart and mind where true understanding takes place, then the language pragmatist will adjust accordingly and try to master the indigenous tongue. He’ll be bad at it for a good long while, but that same filter of effective communication will drive him forward until he reaches a higher and higher level in the local language – or whatever language he needs in order to fulfill his ministry.
Perhaps some stories will help illustrate what this looks like on the ground. During the beginning of our first term, our supervisors told us explicitly not to share the gospel in English. They were worried that if we got into this habit, we would lack the motivation to learn the local language well enough to be able to share in it effectively. And also, that our local friendships would stay forever fixed in the language they began in.
The problem was we were English teachers. So, while we were still speaking the local language like toddlers, some of our advanced students were reading English versions of Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, and wanting to discuss it with us. When the doors opened for spiritual conversation with these advanced students, we felt conscience-bound to switch to English as often as necessary for the sake of clarity and understanding. Our supervisors, in their zeal for the local language, had fallen into a kind of rigidity that caused them to confuse the goal with the means.
In the long run, we found that our local friends were also language pragmatists. They were happy to switch to whichever language led to deeper understanding or relational connection. To this day, we still might bounce back and forth between advanced local language and advanced English as needed in a given conversation.
Consider another example. One of our sister people groups speaks their mother tongue at home and with one another, but is only able to read and write in the dominant regional language. This means that their Bible studies are always a bilingual affair. The Bible is read in the regional language but the discussion takes place in their oral mother tongue. Our colleagues who work among this people group have taken the wise (and pragmatic) approach of seeking to learn both languages.
Some language purists might object that the real goal should be to get these locals reading and writing their own language. And this may very well be an excellent long-term goal. We fully support increased literacy all around, especially when it comes to the language a person dreams in, prays desperate prayers in, and yells in when they stub their toe. But in the meantime, use the tools you have, and don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
While using those good tools, ask these two questions continually: 1) Is effective communication currently taking place? And 2) Would our communication of spiritual things be more effective were we to use a different language? These questions keep the missionary safe from the risk of assuming communication is actually taking place – an assumption that is all too easy when you’ve been told by others the ‘right’ language in which to do ministry.
But hold on, isn’t pragmatism bad when it comes to missions? Only sometimes. Only when we are being pragmatic about things the Bible would have us be principled about. Using ministry salaries to bribe people into becoming Christians is pragmatic in the wrong way. Using whichever language is best to communicate a concept such as atonement is being pragmatic in the best sense. When the Bible gives freedom to follow practical wisdom in a given area, then Christians should walk in that freedom – enjoy it, even – rather than creating their own little missiological laws to then be bound by.
The wonderful truth is that the Bible does not demand we use any given language in order to do God’s work. Instead, we are completely and utterly free to use any of them to effectively communicate the gospel. Each of the world’s 6,000-plus languages has a unique glory all its own, one that will shine forth in worship in this age as well as in the age to come. This means they each belong to us, the heirs of that resurrection. And we can grab any handful of them that we need to (as our limited brains allow) in order to preach the gospel, plant churches, and disciple the saints.
So, consider joining us in becoming pragmatists – language pragmatists, that is. It’s really quite freeing.
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Even before he became emperor, Augustus, grandnephew and heir of Julius Caesar, had carved out the boundaries of Roman Asia. He avenged the defeat of the Romans at Carrhae and drove the Persians east into the Syrian desert. His people urged him to sweep on across Asia like a Roman Alexander. Wipe out Persia, they cried. Some would have had him push even farther, to India. But Augustus sensed, perhaps unconsciously, that Rome’s power base was the Mediterranean and he persistently refused to be drawn into endless land wars. Having conquered Armenia he paused and, instead of pressing on, chose rather to force a treaty of peace in 20 B.C. on the hapless Parthian emperor, Phraates IV. It was an important date in history. It marked the beginning of a new era, the pax Romana, a hundred years of almost uninterrupted peace that Christian writers ever since Origen have hailed as a praeparatio evangelium, one of the ways in which God prepared the world for the coming of Christ and the establishment of the church.
That same treaty changed the pattern of church history also by fixing the boundary between Rome and Persia roughly along the course of the Euphrates River. As a result, from the beginning of the recorded history of Christianity, if any line of division is to be drawn between Asian and Western church history it falls most appropriately not at the western edge of the Asian continent and not at the Mediterranean, but at the Euphrates. It was there that East met West. West and north of that line, Asia Minor, Roman Syria, Judaea, and Armenia were all drawn sooner or later out of Asia proper into the history of Western Christianity. This was a separation, political and cultural, that as it turned out was eventually to divide the church and grievously affect the progress of Christianity in both the East and the West.
–Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. I, p.7
It’s interesting to note that the long Roman peace, and the ways in which it was a preparation of the world for the spread of the gospel, may be owed to this decision by Augustus to not press on to conquer more of a weakened Persia. What if he had pressed his advantage and tried instead to be that Roman Alexander others were calling for? How did he know that it would be a classic blunder if he got involved in a land war in Asia?*
By remaining content with the Euphrates boundary, Augustus effectively established a new status quo with his neighboring empire. And in this revamped east-west arrangement – which lasted largely until the coming of Islam – Christianity was not only able take root in an age of relative peace but eventually to thrive in both the Roman west and the Persian east. Though, as Moffett notes, the longterm affect of this line would also lead to deep regional divisions in the Church.
*only slightly better known than the fact that you should never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line
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This is the story of the one and only exorcism that my parents performed while they were Baptist missionaries in Melanesia – at least the only one that they were aware of. We’ll have to wait til heaven to find out what other spirits may have been driven off unawares as my parents went about their normal missionary work of sharing the gospel and strengthening young churches in the Melanesian highlands. Given how dark and pervasive the worship of the spirits is in that part of the world, I for one would not be surprised to learn in eternity that much more of this kind of warfare was going on than was obvious and visible at the time.
One of the areas my parents worked in was about a half hour’s muddy drive up a mountain from where we lived – when the road was open and clear, that is. At one point, tribal fighting had broken out. In a bid to keep the police from burning down the warring parties’ grass homes, the locals had burned enough of the planks in the one bridge that crossed the river into their area to make it virtually impassable.
For a while, my dad went into the area on his own, to avoid putting our family at risk. He’d ford the river on his motorbike in order to still be able to preach Sunday mornings in the church plant. The river was just shallow enough to do this, although it was full of large river boulders – just as the road itself was shot through with large boulders, rocks, and ruts.
After the fighting settled down, I clearly remember us fording the river as a family in our 1980s Hilux truck and often getting stuck in the orange clay-mud on the far bank. We were regularly dug out by crews of kind villagers who placed large stones and grass clods under our spinning tires and pushed, laughing and knee-deep in mud, until our truck sprang free. This kind of thing could turn a thirty-minute trip into one that took two hours.
At times, my parents would bring their own wooden planks to lay across the bridge’s steel beams so that they could make two temporary tracks for our pickup to drive across. Eventually, the rainy season washed away all the soil on the bank attached to our end of the bridge, and we were back to fording the river.
This area of the highlands was deeply animistic. The people were still largely in bondage to the fear of the spirits of nature and of their deceased relatives, but a veneer of Christianity had been painted over all this by different groups. The Catholics and Seventh-day Adventists had claimed this particular area as their territory. At one point, an aggressive crowd of “Skin Christian” (so-called by the local believers because their Christianity was only skin-deep) Catholics and SDAs surrounded my dad, angry that the Baptists would dare to do ministry on their turf.
One of the regular attendees at the church plant was herself from one of these Catholic families. She went by the Western name of Janet and she was so faithful in her participation that my parents thought she had likely come to faith under their teammates who had begun the church plant.
One day, my parents had stopped to pick up Janet on the way to the church when her family told them she was ill and not able to get out of bed. Janet’s family had requested my parents to come see her on our way back from church. Unalarmed, they continued up the mountain to the church.
Once there, Janet’s friends at church told my parents how scared they were for her. Janet wasn’t just ill. Evil spirits had taken away her ability to speak. For some reason, one evening she had gone down to what was believed to be a dangerously spirit-infested part of the river, at the forbidden time of dusk. This was the same time of day and part of the river where her grandmother had also been attacked by spirits, losing her ability to speak and also to eat. Janet’s grandmother had quickly died afterward. The terrified church folks believed that Janet would suffer the same fate. The Catholic prayers and exorcism with ‘holy water’ had accomplished nothing. The other traditional tribal remedies had also been for naught. Could my parents – the Baptists – do anything to save Janet’s life?
My parents hadn’t been in the country long and had never faced a situation like this. They had thought Janet was a believer. How was this possible? Over the next several hours while the jungle cicadas screamed and my dad tried to preach over them, my mom prayed fervently. Afterward, we all drove part way down the mountain to the hut where Janet was living. My parents, not sure of what they would encounter inside, left us kids in the truck with some other local believers who were getting rides back to the area where we lived.
Going inside, my mom and dad saw Janet and began to try to speak with her. Janet could understand them but confirmed through nods and signs that she was completely unable to speak.
So, my dad got out his Bible. Not completely sure of what was going on, but knowing that evil spirits have no power over those who believe the gospel, my dad turned to one passage after another that proclaimed the good news about Jesus and about those who believe in him. He finished with 1st John 4:4, “Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”
My dad asked Janet if she truly believed the gospel message that he had been reading to her from the Bible. She nodded yes. So, my dad told her that if that was the case, then according to 1st John 4, the Holy Spirit now in her was more powerful than any evil spirit that had caused her inability to speak. He told her that he was going to pray and that he wanted her to repeat after him. Janet nodded a willingness to try this.
The small group together in the hut bowed in prayer. My dad prayed the first sentence and waited.
Then, Janet repeated it after him.
As my dad continued to pray, Janet was able to repeat every line of the prayer after him. The power that had stopped her from being able to speak was now broken. She belonged to Jesus, so the river spirits no longer had any claim on her. My parents, the Baptist missionaries, had seemingly just cast out a demon.
Later, when Janet shared her testimony in front of the church, she shared that this was when she had truly repented and believed. Previously, she had not yet been a true Christian. If this was the case, then it makes sense that the spirits would have previously had the authority to cause her muteness – and that they would have lost that authority the moment she was indwelt by the Spirit of God.
I’ve always appreciated this story from my parents’ ministry because I believe it’s a good example of the simple power of the gospel over the demonic. My parents didn’t do anything flashy or fancy to try to release this woman from demonic oppression. They showed her Bible verses and prayed with her.
It reminds me of one time in college when I heard pastors John Piper and Tom Steller talking about one of the few times they’d been asked to intervene on behalf of someone who seemed to be demon-oppressed. As I recall, they said it involved a lot of praying, a lot of singing, and a lot of sitting together with her until she was released. These kind of activities seem so, well, normal. Yet in the spiritual realm, in the real world so often hidden from us, they must have remarkable power.
I believe that a straightforward reading of Scripture and church history shows us particular seasons of concentrated miracles and visible battles with the demonic. Corresponding to this, we see other long seasons where these things are much ‘quieter,’ much more subtle, going on in the background as it were.
Christians should trust the sovereignty of God regarding which kind of season and context they find themselves living in. You may find yourself in a setting where demonic oppression is much more prevalent than anything you ever saw back home. Or, it may be, like my parents, that you’re only ever asked once in your life to pray for someone who has been attacked by demons. God is in charge of the particular subtlety or in-your-face-ness of our spiritual battles. Our role is simply to trust his power and to fight faithfully where he has placed us.
Will we be ready if we are faced with a situation like Janet’s? Will we throw up our hands because the spiritual need in front of us doesn’t fit with our experience or theological framework? Hopefully, we won’t fall into the trap of thinking that we need some kind of special methodology or training in order to help someone who is oppressed by demons. We have the Holy Spirit, the one who is greater than the spirit that is in the world. We have the powerful word of God. We have direct access to the throne room of heaven. When we sing, the demons shudder.
I’ve not yet been asked to pray for someone who’s been attacked by a demon. But if I am, I plan to do what my parents did – pray, open up my Bible, and simply do what Christians do.
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Try as I might, I simply cannot enjoy the taste of cooked peas. I like pea soup. I like snap peas. I like those dehydrated pea pods that are allegedly a healthier option than potato chips. But there’s just something about the taste of cooked green peas that makes my tastebuds twang and my body shudder.
This, in spite of the fact that I am, if anything, tooconvictional about the importance of being able to enjoy every good edible gift that God has given for our sustenance. When my kids call a certain food disgusting there is a part of my soul that registers that as a major problem and a worrying portent of a less joyful future for them. My wife, thankfully, is always on hand to remind me that disliking certain foods is quite normal and not something that always needs to be addressed as if it’s a great injustice against the Creator and against us, the vice-regent parentals he has appointed for these particular offspring.
Yes, the humble cooked pea reminds me that even when we have tried our best, the freedom to enjoy something is, at the end of the day, a gift from God. In this fallen world, we simply cannot always bring our bodies to enjoy everything that is, in fact, made for our enjoyment. There will always be some things that are fundamentally good that our bodies will register as bad, that we just won’t like. Sometimes we can change this. Often, we can’t.
When it comes to missionaries enjoying the local culture of their people group, these dynamics are also present. Missionaries are only partially responsible for their ability to enjoy the good parts of the local culture. But much of that ability is simply the mysterious gift of God.
It’s a grace and a help when a missionary is able to enjoy the good aspects of the local culture. Missionaries labor in what some studies have shown to be the most stress-inducing roles on the planet. Along with the normal troubles of life and ministry, they must also constantly reject and navigate the dark, twisted parts of a foreign culture – and there’s often much of this in a place that’s been cut off from God’s word and his people from time immemorial. These dark and distressing parts of culture are present in all kinds of unreached contexts and seem to be especially highlighted in isolated, tribal cultures.
Yet every culture retains aspects that still, somehow, beautifully reflect the image of God. These might be the outer layers of the culture, things like food and clothing and customs. They might be the inner layers, things like values and preferences and what is understood to be real. These are the aspects of the culture that point back to a good creation in the beginning and point forward to the strengths of the future Indigenous church. These parts of the culture are worthy of delight, even if they are significantly different from the good parts of the native culture of the missionary. When a missionary is able to delight in them, his life and work will be easier. When he’s not, it’s an extra burden that he must carry.
Now, I’m persuaded that missionaries should earnestly seek to appreciate and even enjoy the good in their focus culture. I believe that the effort to do this is the natural outworking of mature missionary love and humility. If a missionary does not even try to taste and see the goodness of a culture that is, for example, more people-oriented than time-oriented, then something is likely going wrong at the level of the heart.
But I also concede that this mature posture and effort of a given missionary may not produce the desired result. A missionary may try his hardest to enjoy the local music or local cuisine and, after years, still find himself barely able to keep it down. They may labor to know and understand the upsides of impromptu house visits, but still only feel them as incredibly stressful intrusions. When this happens, a missionary has come up against the wall of God’s mysterious sovereignty as it applies to our freedom or lack thereof to enjoy his good gifts.
This is why you need to pray for your missionaries to be able to enjoy the local culture. Because a significant part of their ability to do this is not in their hands at all, but in God’s. I have a good friend who served in a neighboring country in Central Asia. This friend, a godly brother, simply hated tea, yogurt, and olives – all major staples of his region’s diet. He tried his best, but nothing he did could change these preferences. On the other hand, I have known missionaries who were strangely drawn to the cultures of a different part of the world from the time they were children. What accounts for the difference? Certainly, nothing that they did. It was a gift given or not, plain and simple.
I genuinely enjoy many aspects of our Central Asian culture. Some of this is the result of intentional effort, tastes that have been acquired as it were. But some of it I can’t explain. Why should my heart come alive in the Central Asian bazaar when some of my expat friends hate the crowded, loud, and smelly nature of it? Why should I enjoy fizzy fermented yogurt water sprinkled with dill when it makes so many want to gag? I can’t explain these things other than they are gifts that I must learn to steward well. Perhaps someone has been praying for me.
Missionaries’ lives are full of so many things that are hard, that are draining. Small as it might seem, when they are able to find some measure of delight, joy, and even refreshment in aspects of the local culture, this makes a difference in their ability to remain on the field. When they don’t just know that something is technically good, but they are free to also feel its goodness, this is a real grace. And it’s encouraging to the locals as well.
So, pray for missionaries to be able to enjoy the local culture. Pray that they would be able to appreciate and delight in all of the good aspects, even if they’re wildly different from the good aspects of their own culture. Pray for me and my family in this area as we get ready to head back to the more culturally difficult of the two cities we’ve lived in in Central Asia.
And, while you’re at it, pray for me to be able to enjoy cooked peas. If God has created something good, then I want to be free to taste it as such.
If only 27 more friends join us as monthly supporters, we should be 100% funded! If you would like to join our support team, reach out here. Both monthly and one-time gifts are very helpful right now. Many thanks!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
This is a fun new song by Josh Garrels that has some serious reggae, island, and summer vibes. The bright melody provides an interesting contrast to the desperation of the lyrics, which are overall a cry for the comfort and presence of God:
I've been a motherless child I've been an orphan alone Looking for comfort For my soul
Don't matter how hard I try Don't matter which place I go Nothing can heal me Except You, Lord
Josh makes good use of wordplay in the chorus, using the phrase “You rock my soul” to compare God’s comfort to that of a mother gently rocking her child. The song feels like a celebration of the fact that outside of God there is no comfort, there is no wholeness. But that in Him, these things really can be found by the spiritually desperate.
It’s been a good addition to my family’s summer driving tunes, so I commend it to you also.
Only 23% of our support still needs to be raised. If you would like to join our support team, reach out here. Both monthly and one-time gifts are very helpful right now. Many thanks!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Where does the beginning of August 2024 find our family? Well, geographically, we’re in middle Tennessee this week, spending some time away as a family in what we hope is our final month in the US. We arrived last night after a lovely summer drive through the Kentucky and Tennessee countryside. This morning, my kids got to swim in a lake, dig in its sandy beach, and scream when they saw a snake casually swimming through the water. My wife and I, for our part, are soaking up all the greenery we can before we head back to a land where the trees don’t grow quite so tall and quite so thick.
As far as timeline, the goal at this point is still to move back to Central Asia the first week of September. Our housing runs out at the end of this month and the kids’ new MK school starts the second week of Sept. So, between those deadlines and our eagerness to get back, we’re hoping to make it on a plane first thing next month.
Financially, can this happen? We’re not ruling it out yet. By God’s grace, 75% of our total needed funds (including both monthly and one-time setup costs) have been raised. This means only 25% is left, a lump sum that my fundraising spreadsheet today tells me is just over 34K. That’s certainly nothing to scoff at, but neither is it insurmountable. We have complete flexibility at this point to raise these funds through either one-time gifts or monthly giving, so it could be as simple as twenty more friends signing up for $100 a month plus five churches giving one-time gifts of 2K each.
It’s interesting to be this close but also to know that it’s going to take a significant push to get to the goal. It reminds me a little bit of when in high school we climbed the highest mountain in our Melanesian country, a peak just under 15,000 feet tall. We couldn’t see the summit for most of the hike. Then, at last, we rounded a spur of the mountain and could finally see the peak. We were encouraged because the destination was now within sight – but it was also clear that it was going to take another couple of hours of serious hiking to get up there.
We’d love your prayers for our fundraising efforts this next month. And if any of you faithful readers of this quirky missions blog (or your churches or businesses) want to help us meet this goal, we’d love to have your partnership. For those who have already started giving, we’re incredibly grateful.
How are our hearts right now? Feeling some of the uncertainty, but also resting in God’s good sovereignty. Of course, we very much hope to make it back to Central Asia in our preferred timeline. But the Lord knows if our current plans are sound or if what’s truly best is a little more delay and transition. We will seek to trust him no matter what.
I recently heard John Piper share about joy in suffering. He called when this happens for a Christian “an emotional miracle.” We definitely wouldn’t say we’re in a season of intense suffering right now. It’s more the normal everyday difficulties of missionaries in transition – the waiting, working, combating anxiety, planning, undoing your plans, trying not to get ahead of yourself, trying to discern God’s timing and our own responsibility to bring things about. But if asked if we could also use an emotional miracle of joy in the midst of this unique season, we would say yes.
Our kids could look back on this month of uncertainty and remember Mom and Dad as distant, stressed, and busy. Or, they could look back and remember August 2024 as one of the most content and joyful times of their parents’ lives. How wonderful that, in Jesus, it really could be the latter.
Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:11-13)
If you would like to join our support team, reach out here. Both monthly and one-time gifts are very helpful right now. Many thanks!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The Spring of 2018 was a wild time. Our region’s airports had been shut down by the surrounding powers. Militias funded by foreign regimes lurked at many of our borders, meaning Mercenary Dan would occasionally call me up trying to sell me armored convoys. There were rumors the only land border still open to us would soon be taken over by the hostile central government. And all the while I was trying to manage an earthquake relief project while also co-leading a young and messy church plant.
In the midst of all of this, we had a family wedding to attend in the US. We decided to go and take the risk of getting stuck out of the country, given the fact that we had been stuck in for so long. Adam*, who was recently back in his homeland after a decade in the UK, and struggling with some of the most intense reverse culture shock I’ve ever seen, had recently decided his calling was to start an NGO focused on caring for the street dogs of our city. Right as we were leaving, he texted me to ask if he could use our courtyard as temporary housing for a pregnant street dog he had found.
My answer was an unequivocal no. We were living that year in another missionary’s furnished home, which they in turn were renting from a fiery older feminist landlady. “I would go down and join the protests, but I’m too old now to run once the bullets start flying,” she had growled once while hosting us for tea. Needless to say, we wanted to stay in this woman’s good graces.
Now, our cities do have the scrawny little street dog types so common all over the world. But we also have street dogs that are the descendants of the enormous mastiffs that have been the working dogs of our Central Asian mountains from time immemorial. These yellowish-tan dogs can get massive, sometimes as big as donkeys, with huge, solid heads and jaws you’d never want to feel the force of. They were bred to guard sheep and fend off wolves, after all.
The pregnant mama dog that Adam had decided to rehabilitate was one of these mastiffs. But as I had clearly told him no, I left town and didn’t think anything more of it. Little did I know that while we were trying our best to cross a bottle-necked land border without being turned into cigarette smugglers, Adam had decided he would risk it anyway and lodge his pregnant canine project in our courtyard. After all, he thought, what could go wrong? It would only be for a few nights until a better situation could be found. The poor girl was pregnant and needed to be taken care of.
A couple of weeks later, we were wrapping up our short trip to the US and scheming for how to get back in-country when I got the message from Adam.
“Hey, bro! Glad you’re coming back soon. Hey… I have some bad news. The pregnant street dog ate your house… Sorry.”
I read the message and understood the individual words, but did not understand the actual meaning of the sentence. The pregnant street dog ate my house???
I got Adam on the phone as soon as I could. It was then that I learned that he had put the dog in our courtyard even though I had told him not to. That was bad enough. But apparently, the dog had been either really hungry or really frustrated at being cooped up because she had proceeded to scratch and gnaw two huge holes in the house’s front siding. The external walls of the house were made of cinder blocks covered in a thick layer of styrofoam, itself covered by a small layer of hard coating. This kind of siding was a newer attempt in our area to keep the cement blocks from absorbing so much of the summer heat and turning the house into one large oven for humans.
As Adam did his best to drum up sympathy for his trespassing and destructive guest, I remembered from a random childhood experience that styrofoam was technically edible. Perhaps the dog had gotten some pretty crazy pregnancy cravings, and, unable to satisfy these, had gone for the only somewhat-edible thing around. The size of the dog meant it had no problem breaking through the few millimeters of hard coating so that it could get at the styrofoam underneath. What its ravenous activity left in its wake were two large round areas of exposed cement – scarred with massive claw marks – framed by a bright white border of crumbling styrofoam. From the pictures Adam sent me, it was like someone had taken a shotgun to the front facade of our house and left two big holes the size of small doorways.
The landlady was going to kill me.
However, there was nothing to do other than begin the long trek home. After three flights, two overnight layovers, a four-hour bus ride across the border, and a seven-hour drive back to our city, we finally rolled up to our house. My wife and I surveyed the damage.
In the midst of what had been bright tan-colored siding, two roundish, dark grey cement scars glared out at us. As we stared, the wind blew, causing the courtyard to swirl with little styrofoam bead tornados. A plastic yard toy of the kids was over in one corner, mangled beyond all recognition. Dogzilla had indeed left her mark.
The following week was spent searching the bazaar trying to find the exact same kind of siding and color of paint so we could do a patch job. We never found an exact match (the sun fades paint and building products disappear from the market quickly) but we got pretty close. Our elderly landlady seemed disgruntled by it all, but since we paid for everything ourselves, she put up with it rather better than I expected. I did hear that after we moved out she may have been a little more open with others about her true feelings. Not at all that I blame her. A giant pregnant dog had taken large bites out of her property.
Adam, appearing very sorry for what he had done, promised to make it up for me by building us a doghouse for free some time. He kept his word when a few years later he built us a doghouse for our little black German shepherd puppy. However, Adam’s NGO for street dogs never exactly took off. Some ideas just aren’t meant to be.
As for the pregnant mama dog, Adam used wooden pallets to build her a dog house on an empty lot – which she then promptly abandoned. Alas, she was wild and free, a descendant of the great mountain dogs of old. Even though she was with child, she would not be constrained to human notions of domesticity. She would do what was necessary to maintain her freedom – even eating chunks out of the sides of houses.
There are many sentences I never expected to hear as a missionary. But among the most surprising has to be the one Adam sent me that Spring morning:
“The pregnant street dog ate your house.”
We will be fully funded and headed back to the field when 29 more friends become monthly or annual supporters. If you would like to join our support team, reach out here. Many thanks!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
This local proverb speaks to the truth that if you try to do two things at once, you do neither of them well. The imagery of the saying has to do with trying to fit two animal heads (sheep, goat, cow, etc.) into one pot for boiling. Traditionally, this wouldn’t have been possible, given the size of the pots available. No, each head needed its own pot. Only then would it be boiled well enough, which really is important if you’re planning on eating the brains.
The wise laborer will learn to slow down, divide his work into separate parts, and then focus on those parts one at a time. I remember learning this lesson as a new dad who needed to divide my time between our part-time refugee ministry work and our part-time small business of selling Central Asian chai and Melanesian coffee to Louisville hipsters and seminarians. My most effective weeks were those when two days a week were set apart solely for the business and three days were set apart solely for the refugee work. When they mashed together on a given day, I ended up accomplishing much less and doing so with a much more anxious and cloudy brain.
To work well, divide your work into separate compartments – or into separate pots.
We will be fully funded and headed back to the field when 31 more friends become monthly or annual supporters. If you would like to join our support team, reach out here. Many thanks!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 