Which attribute of God is it that saves us? All of them, in fact. All of God’s attributes and character are involved in salvation. For example, we are saved by his goodness and loving kindness, as it says in Titus 3:4-5. In Romans 3:21-26, we are saved by his justice, because he is “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
This song by John Mark McMillan celebrates that we are also saved by the beauty of the Lord. In what sense is it God’s beauty that saves us? I would contend that it is in the sense that salvation is an act of revelation, where our sin-blind eyes are at last opened so that we are able to see the King’s beauty (Ps 27:4, Is 33:17). And no one who sees that beauty will be able or willing to resist it. This song also draws on the fact that it is this experience of the beauty of the Lord that keeps on saving us, as we remember it on our dark days, and as we look forward to seeing his beauty for all eternity.
I want to live, I want to exist In the sight of your fire and splendor And on dark days my heart will remember
That I’ve seen Your holy colors Felt the cracking of Your thunders If I’ve been born again into a house of many wonders I’ve been saved by the beauty of the Lord I’ve been saved by the beauty of the Lord
We only need to raise 9k ($750 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Three English-language international churches in our region are in need of faithful pastors. 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Sometime around when our Iranian Bible study ran afoul of Mohler’s security and fell apart due to claims of espionage, Reza* had a dream in his small Louisville apartment. In his dream, a man was nailed to a sort of tree. The bleeding man spoke to him with kindness and told him he loved him. Reza didn’t know who he was, though he couldn’t help but feel like he knew his voice from somewhere in his past.
Upon waking, he asked his secular Turkish roommate who he thought the man in the dream might be.
“Really, bro? That’s Jesus, of course. Everyone knows that.”
It wasn’t long after that dream that Reza reached out to see if I wanted to hang out again. Walking up and down Frankfurt Avenue, Reza didn’t tell me about his dream. Instead, he and I discussed his diplomatic questions about what Christians believe about various topics. It seemed like he might just be making polite conversation, since he knew I was studying theology. But at some point, I asked him if he’d like to study the Bible one-on-one with me. To my delight, he agreed.
We started in the book of Romans but quickly shifted to Matthew. Romans was pretty tough to understand since Reza knew so little about Jesus, coming as he did from a more secular, leftist Iranian family. And I was hopeful that Matthew’s very Middle Eastern way of building the case for Jesus as Messiah might prove just as helpful for my new Iranian friend as it had for Hama* back when I was doing my gap year in the Middle East.
Reza, as I would quickly learn, was very sharp, very stubborn, and from a family of proud dissidents to boot. Once, when the Iranian president had visited Reza’s prestigious high school and held a time of Q&A, Reza had seized his opportunity to publicly ask the turbaned politician some very awkward questions. The president, of course, was not used to being called out like this, and by a kid no less, so Reza was blacklisted. That’s how things go in Iran, and an accumulation of similar developments like this is why Reza and his family eventually fled the country.
This defiant spirit was the same posture that Reza brought to our study of the Bible. So, as we sat in the sparse living room of our first apartment and my pregnant wife poured us chai after chai, Reza and I fought over every single millimeter of the claims of the gospel. Gone were the diplomatic questions, and out came all the guns and missiles of Reza’s intellectual and worldview bunker. There were times when the discussion got so heated and Reza seemed so offended that I was sure that he wouldn’t come back. But he did, week after week, for months on end. And every night as we fell asleep, my wife and I would pray that somehow God would break through Reza’s defenses.
As her first pregnancy wore on, my wife started falling asleep earlier and earlier in the evening. Often, after a valiant effort to stay awake and present for the discussion, Reza and I would look over to see her passed out in an armchair. It was on one of these nights, after we had sent my wife back to bed, that the breakthrough came.
Reza and I had made it, a millimeter at a time, up to Matthew 9, the story of Jesus forgiving the sins of the paralytic – and proving he had the authority to do so by healing the man’s legs as well.
There was something about this story that hit home for Reza. He wanted to know if Jesus really had the authority to forgive sins. I didn’t know it at the time, but Reza’s embrace of the worldly college lifestyle was weighing heavily on his conscience. Since he was more of a materialist than a Muslim at heart, I found it curious that, in this miracle story, he didn’t question Jesus’ ability to heal a paralytic. No, it seemed that Reza’s thinking was, in fact, largely in line with Jesus’ logic in the passage. Healing paralysis is small potatoes compared to forgiving someone’s sins. After all, a good prophet can do the former. But only God himself can do the latter.
I assured Reza that, yes, Jesus indeed had all authority to forgive sins, even his sins, even that very night. This story proved it. The whole Bible proved it. We sat in silence for a few minutes as the effect of this truth washed over Reza. Gone were the intellectual objections and the cultural offenses. Now it was simply Reza and his sins facing the stunning claims and power of Jesus Christ.
The realm of the spirit is, for now, invisible. But I could have sworn I saw a change that night. There was something about Reza’s response to our study in Matthew 9 that felt qualitatively different. Although it was raining heavily outside, Reza insisted on walking the short distance alone back to his place. He spent that walk thinking, praying, and feeling the rain wash over his body, just as it seemed the grace of God and the beauty of the gospel were washing over his soul.
As soon as he left, I texted a group of close friends to pray for Reza, telling them that it seemed like he had come closer than ever to really grasping the claims of the gospel.
“He seems so close! Or is maybe already a believer! Pray!”
Then I went back to tell my wife the good news.
“Hey, love. Wake up! I think Reza may have become a Christian tonight!”
With some difficulty, she rolled over and propped herself up on one arm.
“Wait, what? Reza got saved? Oh no, I missed it!”
And then we prayed together for him one more time.
As far as I can tell, Reza did indeed come to faith that night. But there was another part of his story that I didn’t learn for years to come.
Often, believers look back on their story and, over time, see more and more of the ways that God was drawing them to himself, preparing them years before they ever heard the gospel. These parts of their story aren’t in their testimony early on, but they tend to get added in over time, as God reveals more and more to them just how active and present he had been in their lives all along.
This was very much the case with Reza.
As a boy in the mountains of southwestern Iran, Reza had become unexpectedly paralyzed. After about a week in this condition, he had a dream in which a man appeared and told him that he was going to heal him. In the dream, the man touched Reza’s back and told him that he was going to roll him over. When Reza woke up, he was not only able to get up and walk, but also to go out later that day and play soccer with his friends. His grandparents, who took care of him, were stunned, unable to explain this miraculous recovery.
Years later, and some time after coming to faith, Reza realized why the voice in his dream about the man nailed to a tree had seemed so familiar. It was the same voice as the man who had appeared in his childhood dream and healed his paralysis so many years earlier. The man who had told him that he would heal him was the same man on the tree who told him he loved him.
No wonder the story of the paralytic man from Matthew 9 had such an effect on Reza. Some part of him already knew that Jesus had the authority to heal the lame. What he didn’t know was that this also meant he had the authority to forgive his sins.
But just like the man in Matthew 9, Reza reached out in faith that somehow, hope beyond hope, this could be true, that Jesus could work this deepest of all healings, the forgiveness of sin.
And just like that first paralytic so long ago, Reza walked home, a new man.
We only need to raise 9k ($750 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Three English-language international churches in our region are in need of faithful pastors. 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.
*names changed for security
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Yesterday, on the long drive from New Orleans to Louisville, my family finished listening to The Hobbit audiobook, the version read by Andy Serkis. It was masterfully done. Serkis deserves his reputation as one of the best voice actors out there. If you’ve ever struggled to get into Tolkien’s books of Middle-earth, give this audiobook version another try and see if, like my own wife and daughter, you’re finally hooked.
While listening, I was reminded of just how long Bilbo Baggins’ story has been a part of my life. My parents brought a record player with them to Melanesia in the late 80s. And one of the records they brought with them was the soundtrack for the 1977 Hobbit cartoon. Somehow, this had made it into my dad’s record collection even before he had met my mom. Those songs, along with the cartoon itself, were an early and constant part of my and my brothers’ childhood soundtrack and imagination.
Growing up with this 1977 cartoon adaptation, I never realized just how strange it was. In this project, the fiction of a British professor who was shaped by Norse languages and mythology, as well as the trenches of WWI, meets the music of the hippie singer-songwriters of the 1970s and the odd animation of a group that would go on to become the anime Studio Ghibli. Sadly, my wife finds the whole thing unbearably creepy and, after watching it once with me, has sworn ‘never again.’ Alas, for the sake of marital harmony, I will have to listen to the stirring strains of The Greatest Adventure in my earbuds for the foreseeable future – not to mention much livelier numbers such as Down, Down to Goblin Town.
But I digress. The main point of this post was to tell you how Bilbo Baggins made me brave. Or, at least, how he was one of several good ingredients that made me want to be brave, should I ever be given the chance.
This is exactly what good stories should do. G.K. Chesterton says, “Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.” Similarly, CS Lewis says, “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.” We live in a fallen world, so we desperately need good stories where the heroes stand up and defy evil, even risking their lives doing so. The advantage of being exposed to stories like this in childhood is the time they have to marinate and shape the young heart.
One of the major themes of The Hobbit is how an unlikely little hobbit like Bilbo Baggins ends up saving his friends (and many others) through being courageous, even though he is very small and afraid. At many points throughout the book, Bilbo is faced with dangerous choices, but each time he opts to do the right thing, which is also the risky thing. Perhaps his greatest test is towards the end of the book when he is going, alone, down the long tunnel to where the sleeping dragon, Smaug, awaits. Tolkien writes,
It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.
-The Hobbit, chapter 12
In this passage, Tolkien says that Bilbo fought the true battle in the tunnel alone, before he really knew what facing the dragon would entail, and that his decision to press forward was the bravest thing he ever did. I heard and read this passage over and over again as I was growing up. And every time I did, in my heart, I wanted to be like Bilbo. I hoped that if I were to ever find myself alone in a dark tunnel leading to danger for the sake of good, for the sake of my friends, that I would also choose to keep going.
It makes me wonder, when exactly is the real battle fought for young boys who will one day face their own ‘dragons’? Reflecting on my own childhood, and now observing my own boys, I think it’s less one big decision made in a moment of crisis. More likely, it is countless small desires and resolutions made while listening to stories like The Hobbit, tales where biblical virtues, such as courage unto death, are held up as good and right and worthy of emulation. One small layer at a time, one tiny steeling of the will at a time, and a hard core of courage eventually forms in a boy’s chest – one that will only be revealed in moments of crisis.
They say you can’t know how you will respond in a crisis until you’re in it. Will you move away from danger or toward it? Will your instinct be self-preservation or the safety of others? This may partially be true, but I would contend that one very good sign of what you will do can be discerned from the kinds of stories you have been listening to – and what has been happening in your heart, will, and prayers as you listen.
Of course, Bilbo was only one part of a balanced narrative diet. My childhood and adolescence were also shaped by other good stories, including Narnia, the Rocky movies, and films like Gettysburg. Most importantly, I grew up immersed in those true stories in the Bible that form the substance of which hobbits are only the shadow. I grew up hearing of David defying Goliath, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego defying Nebuchadnezzar and his furnace, Stephen being stoned, and Jesus Christ himself willingly passing through death and hell for the sake of his friends.
Along with this, I also saw courage modeled as Melanesians defied the spirits and witch doctors to follow Jesus, as my dad gave up his own life on the mission field, and as my mom later bravely returned as a single mom. I saw these real-life risky decisions made by followers of Jesus, and I wanted to be like them.
Years later, when a friend in high school was attacked by a mugger, I was put to the test. Would my instinct be to wrestle the mugger off of her? In that moment, there was no time for cost analysis. I sprung. And I did my best to fight the guy off my friend. She and I ended up safe in the end, and the mugger in police custody. Where does that kind of an impulse come from? Looking back, I think, in part, from little Bilbo Baggins in the tunnel. The decision to act and help had been made a long time ago. And it had been reaffirmed over and over again.
Courage, I believe, is ultimately a gift from God. It is a gift many are given in a common grace sense, a merciful inheritance still from the first Adam. But it must also be given in a special way to those who have new hearts, to those who know the second Adam. In us, the very courage of the Son of God slowly grows, layer upon layer, and will go on growing forever. This is the kind of courage that can lead to faithful believers from the past like Hugh Latimer, who not only faithfully endured being burned at the stake, but even called out in encouragement to his friend, Nicholas Ridley, also in the flames, “Be of good comfort, Mr. Ridley, and play the man: We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust never shall be put out.”
How can we encourage the growth of courage in our lives, and in our own kids’ hearts? The word of God must take primary place here, and after it, the example of the faithful we have in the Church Universal and in our own local assemblies.
But along with this, let’s not neglect the power of good stories. God used many means to make me brave. Not least of these was the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins.
We only need to raise 10k ($833 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
As with so many other American kids of the late 80s and early 90s, I once sported a mullet. And a curly-haired mullet at that. But hairstyles, as with fashions in general, are surprisingly global in their spread. Just go back and look at pictures of university students in Afghanistan in the 1960s and you’ll see what I mean. This means that mullets also made their way to many of the countries of Central Asia in past decades and are popping up once again, even as they enjoy their controversial return in the West.
I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the haircut I had as a 3-year-old, but I still laughed out loud when I recently heard the local equivalents of the English “Business in the front, party in the back” idiom about this particular hairstyle. The local sayings quoted above are getting at the same thing, though in a very Central Asian way.
In the first saying, the short hair on top and in the front is dubbed “For Allah,” meaning it’s respectful and presentable, even for a religious setting. But the back hair at the bottom of the head is “For Abdullah,” who is probably a 14-year-old working-class kid who has already started smoking and likes to ride on his Chinese motorbike as his mullet trails majestically behind him in the wind.
The first part of the second saying, “For Ramazan” is a local way of referring to Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and religious rededication. But the second part, “For Tarazan,” refers to none other than the vine-swinging jungle man we know in the West as Tarzan. This carries with it not only the carefree, somewhat rebellious sense of a teenager, but also that there is something hinting at the wild, the barbarian, in the mullet hairstyle. Which is, of course, one reason why young men like it. I remember reading how leather trousers became fashionable at some point among the teenagers of Rome, since only barbarians wore trousers while ‘respectable’ Romans wouldn’t be caught dead in them. A similar thing is going on here, it seems.
I find it hilarious that not only are mullets a global thing, but so is the opinion that they are a most uncanny hairstyle, a mix of things that probably should not have been mixed. The conservative middle class of the West and Central Asia may not agree on everything, but in their quips about mullets, they have surprising common ground.
We only need to raise 12k ($1,000 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The Central Asian believers and I leaned forward around our table, holding the earpieces tight against our ears to make sure we understood the assignment. Simultaneous translation meant that our preaching training was being taught in English, yet we were each hearing it in one ear in the local tongue – a complex, yet not impossible way to learn solid principles for teaching and preaching God’s word. Other tables were made up of believers and leaders from a neighboring people group, hearing the translation in yet another language.
Live translation, when the teacher or preacher pauses to let you translate, takes a fair amount of skill. Simultaneous translation, on the other hand, takes an extra special kind of linguistic ability and mental quickness. The local believing gal we usually hired for this kind of translation was in another country for an ultimate frisbee tournament, of all things, so we were trying out a couple of other believers who had traveled up from Poet City to help with the conference. Of the two of them, the teenage gal -whose parents had in recent years been outed as spies for a neighboring regime- was by far doing the better job.
As she translated, I mulled on the riddle of what to do when a teenager shows all the signs of true faith and a solid commitment to gathering with the body, but it seems that her parents are on the payroll of a foreign Islamic government – and likely reporting on things they’re learning through their daughter. So far, the wisest thing seemed to be to trust God and carry on. If they ended up reporting on this particular training, then at least mom and dad and their foreign handlers would be getting some sound homiletics principles.
“What were those foreigners telling people to do?”
“To make sure they could identify the biblical author’s intended message for the original audience.”
“And then what?”
“To find valid connections from that message to the good news of Jesus.”
“And after that?”
“To apply the main ideas to the daily lives of both the Christians and non-Christians who might be listening.”
“No! Those foreign infidels! Is there no end to their schemes? Make sure to report back if they start talking about how to craft effective sermon illustrations.”
I laughed to myself, thinking about what that kind of conversation might sound like.
“Wait, what are we supposed to do?”
This actual question from one of the brothers at my table brought me back to the current moment.
“Oh, right,” I responded. “The trainer asked if we could read Isaiah 25:6-9 and summarize it with a phrase or title that describes the main idea.”
One of the men at the table cleared his throat and then read out the passage in the local language.
[6] On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. [7] And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. [8] He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken. [9] It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”
After the passage was read, the table was quiet for a minute as we each thought about what major themes were present in the passage. Our Central Asian locals are not typically strong in this kind of exercise. Their educational system majors on rote memorization and repetition. It does not equip them to do things like summarizing a passage in their own words and recognizing the main point. But this was year four of this preaching training, and, slowly but surely, these crucial textual analysis skills were getting stronger.
“The hospitality of God!” one man exclaimed.
“Interesting,” I replied, “Where do you see that?”
“Well, what is the main thing happening in this passage? God is hosting all peoples on top of a mountain for a great picnic with the very best food. Look at how this passage overflows with his generosity and hospitality!”
I took another look, and sure enough, there it was, clear as day in verse 6. I had skipped right over this theme to focus on the theme of God destroying death forever (also a major theme in the passage). Leave it to Central Asians to spot what is obviously an eschatological mountain picnic hosted by God himself when the Westerners skip right past it.
It seemed our British trainer did the same thing I did, because he sort of looked confused when the same man raised his hand during the larger group discussion time to mention the theme of God’s salvific hospitality that had jumped out at him.
This is why it’s so helpful to study the Bible with those from other cultures and backgrounds. It’s not that the meaning of the text itself is relative and shifts according to the culture of the interpreter. It’s that each of our cultures gives us eyes for certain things, and blind spots for others. My culture is weaker in hospitality, so I’m less likely to see that when it’s there in the text. But there are other areas where I can see things because of my background that my Central Asia friends are likely to miss.
This is an argument not just for studying the Bible with those from other cultures, but also with those from other ages. Saints from the past are going to be awake to things to which my generation has grown dull and blind. I need their help to more fully understand the Bible, just as future generations will need ours.
The Bible is so rich and so deep. Sometimes I wonder if God’s plan in allowing so many languages and cultures is, in part, so that we might be better equipped to see more aspects of the Scriptures’ richness and beauty.
As for me, I’d like to spend more time looking for the hospitality of God in the Bible. Now that I’m more ‘awake’ to this idea, it seems to pop up just about everywhere.
We only need to raise 14k ($1,166 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
“No, we didn’t want to join a church, and we didn’t start one. I didn’t come here to plant a church and didn’t want to get pulled into all that would entail. I came here to translate the Bible. And for a number of years, the expat house fellowship that we led every week went great. But in recent years, we’ve had to deal with some serious sin issues among those who attend. And let me tell you, I have spent so much time trying to deal with these problems that I have found myself thinking maybe it would have been more efficient if we had just started a church in the beginning after all!”
I found this confession from an older missionary very insightful.
Here was another admission that one of the primary reasons for so many missionaries sidestepping the local church on the mission field is the Western value of task-driven efficiency. This value is often a strength of Western culture, but when it causes us Westerners to neglect other areas of biblical faithfulness, such as a week-in-week-out commitment to a church in our community, it becomes an idol. In this case, this missionary couple was so focused on their good task of translating the Bible that they decided that joining a local church on the field, or planting one, would take up too much of their time, time that they felt would be better stewarded by a singular focus on the task they’d been sent to do.
A huge number of missionaries overseas are not members of local churches on the field. Nor are they interested in doing the work to transform their team or coalition of missionary partners into an organized church. A few of them will have more advanced reasoning for this, sometimes related to missiologist Ralph Winter’s sodality vs. modality framework (a position to be analyzed in a future post). Other missionaries serve in places with no churches, no churches healthy enough to join, or no team or locals to form into a church. But many coming out of the West simply no longer have the biblical instincts or ecclesiology to feel that they should join or form a church on the field. “Isn’t it enough to meet weekly for bible teaching, songs, and prayer? Wherever two or three are gathered, right? Isn’t my team my church?” Add to this posture that joining or starting a church seems so, well, time-consuming, and it’s no wonder that the Western missionaries who do join churches on the field, or start churches that they then join, are the oddballs.
No, many, many missionaries think that the best thing is to retain their membership in their churches back in the homeland while they perennially sidestep the local church in their actual geographic locale. This all too common posture in the name of stewarding the time is both misguided and shortsighted.
The missionary’s confession I began with is a good example of what can go wrong when missionaries on the field commit themselves to what I’ve dubbed elsewhere, ‘weekly missionary chapel’, instead of joining or starting an actual local church. This family thought things would be simpler with a loosely defined house worship gathering every week with a bunch of other missionaries. Even when a good international church was planted in their city, they chose to stay separate from it and continue their house fellowship.
However, that earlier simplicity disappeared once serious sin arose among the attendees. Why? Well, there were no recognized pastors for this gathering, just a small team of casually-designated ‘leaders.’ There was no real system of membership, just a vague agreement among the missionaries attending about who was allowed to come (no locals, mind you). There was no mechanism for church discipline because from the very beginning, the aim of this group was to not be a church. The missionaries attending this group who ended up in sin were members of their sending churchesback in America, so what kind of spiritual authority could the ‘leaders’ of this group really exert over them?
As wise Central Asians say, “Pray, but tie your camel tight.” And as wise Westerners says, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” Set out to establish an efficient pseudo-church but haphazardly leave out a bunch of the biblical stuff that feels too time-consuming, and you are asking for trouble. Those biblical structures are there for a reason.
And yet, for most missionaries, it continues to feel simpler, more focused, and more efficient to sidestep the local church on the mission field. However, as we’ve seen, this means that when there are serious problems to deal with, they then have to quickly cobble together new systems to deal with them. Yet because they’re intentionally not a church, they don’t have clear biblical guidance or precedence for the structures and mechanisms they build. Instead, they’re just depending on their own wisdom and on what seems practical. Dealing with conflict and sin is always time-consuming, even in a healthy church, but reinventing the wheel and cobbling together solutions in this way ends up taking so much more time in the end (not to mention how it ends up hurting people).
Consider how coming to an agreement on a doctrinal statement may seem very time-consuming. But that process is far more efficient in the long run than suddenly having to figure out what to do every time a missionary with doctrine quite different from yours wants to join your house group.
Hammering out a church covenant also seems like a laborious process. But it’s far more efficient than having to explain in the middle of mess after mess why certain behaviors and not others justify expulsion from the group when you’ve never mentioned them before.
Taking time away from your main ministry to disciple believers from other people groups – maybe even in English – might seem like a costly side quest. But it’s not nearly as inefficient as your team burning out because you tried to live for a decade on the mission field without truly being connected to the Body.
These are just a few examples of how joining a local church on the field or planting one may seem inefficient in the short term, but in the long run will counterintuitively mean actually going faster. When conflict comes, there are biblical mechanisms to deal with it. When issues arise, clarity on how to navigate them already exists. When your gifts fail, the diversity of the local church comes to the rescue. Investing in the local church always pays off, and often in ways we never could have predicted.
Missionaries, let’s not sidestep the local church on the mission field. Let’s either start one or join one. If we’re in a context where this isn’t possible, we should pray and work for that to eventually change. Let’s not continue to pretend that church membership in a body on another continent is a good long term posture for our families – good stopgap measure though it may be. And please, let’s not hold ourselves aloof from the local church for the sake of efficiency.
After all, we are not called to be efficient above all else. We are called to be faithful. And that will often involve things that, at least initially, feel quite inefficient indeed.
We only need to raise 15k ($1,250 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Here’s another poem I’ve translated, written in our local language by Shepherd*, likely the first Christian poet among our people group.
In this poem, Shepherd starts with a very Central Asian image – that of ripe berry trees generously dropping their fruit when kids throw rocks up into the branches. Shepherd uses this picture to allude to how even when believers are attacked, what comes out of us is the fruit of the Spirit. What a helpful image to illustrate how believers are now able to love even their enemies. The rest of the poem is a walk-through of the remarkable effects in the life of a believer that come from knowing Jesus, the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and the Father’s kingdom and calling.
As with the previous poem of Shepherd’s that I posted, my aim has been to try to do as direct a translation as possible while also seeking to keep the original rhyme scheme and some sense of meter. To read this as a Central Asian would, be sure to slow down and emphasize the last word of each line.
A Fruitful Tree by Shepherd H
We must be like a tree where fruit is gleaned when stone is cast We’ve followed Jesus, are assured we will not die in spirit at the last This body weak, which cannot a virus even forestall By light of Christ alone can on its shoulders mountains haul In scheme of life, the Bible is the only true way and artery The light of the earth and heaven, full of joy and humility May Jesus’ Holy Spirit be to us as a shield, our protection If not for the Father’s kingdom, we would not know embrace or affection Hallelujah for the joy you have given us in these, our lives You call us as your children, not as strangers, nor as slaves
We need to raise 22k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. 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 do so 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The plan was simple. And at no point was it supposed to involve bedbugs or mafia-style van transfers.
I was carrying luggage needed for two single gals from our church who were headed to Western China for six months. They were flying out from a different part of the US, so we would meet up in the Beijing airport, then take the final flight together to the city where our missionary friends were living. On the way, my route had me spending the night in Guangzhou. Since the airport hotel had looked like it might break the trip budget, and I was at the time a youthful 26-year-old missions pastor, I just planned on sleeping in the airport.
Shortly before midnight, I had just got the bags from baggage claim and was scanning the airport for good spots to camp out, when the light started turning off. Airport staff then started shooing people out of the buliding. It didn’t seem like I would be able to sleep in the airport after all.
The airport emptied remarkably quickly, and I found myself following the signs for the airport hotel. What else was to be done? Close to the external doors, I was approached by a kind-looking middle-aged Chinese woman holding a laminated paper that said ‘Airport Hotel.’ She didn’t speak English, and I didn’t know any Chinese, but we nodded enthusiastically at one another to indicate that I was looking for the thing her sign advertised. She then motioned for me to follow.
True, the picture on her sign didn’t have any branding on it or necessarily look like the airport hotel I had seen online, but perhaps it was another one nearby. After all, major airports tend to have multiple airport hotels. If it were a different hotel, chances were good it would be more affordable.
We walked out to the curb and got into a small white van, where the big bags were lugged into the back. I settled in for what I assumed would be a short transfer. Sure enough, after only a few turns, we pulled into the parking lot of a big, shiny hotel.
This was where things started to get weird. Rather than dropping me off at the door, they pulled up next to an identical small white van in the parking lot. Then, they transferred the bags from one van to the other, indicating that they wanted me to also get into the back of the second van.
I didn’t know any Chinese, and they didn’t know any English, so I motioned questioningly toward the airport hotel fifty or so yards away. The two men driving the second van shook their heads and pointed at the back of the van. At this point, the first van with the woman drove off. I tried to ask if they were taking me to another airport hotel, and it seemed like maybe-possibly-hopefully that’s what they were trying to tell me in Chinese.
So, in what was not my soundest of travel decisions, I got in the back of the second van, hoping for the best. As soon as we started driving away from the hotel, I realized I may have made a serious mistake. I had no international data on my cell phone. I had no way of contacting anyone as I, and the bags I was supposed to be safeguarding, were driven away from the airport and into a strange and foreign city.
As the next half hour passed, I became increasingly concerned. We had left the major roads and had entered what I can only describe as the bowels of the city. We drove through tight alleyways full of wires, puddles, and humming neon signs advertising local establishments that had clearly seen better days. I am typically quite good at problem-solving in a pinch, but as we drove deeper and deeper into the dark maze of alleyways, I was utterly at a loss for what I should do next. I decided I might as well sit tight until we reached our destination, and simply try to make the best of things once we arrived – even if that meant I was soon to find myself robbed, stranded, or hostage to the Chinese mafia.
As I chewed on how my poor wife and toddlers might never know what became of me, I made a promise to myself, one I have largely kept to this day, to never travel again without some kind of way to contact others, some kind of working mobile data. And to keep an eye out for kind-looking middle-aged foreign women holding signs who turn out to have nefarious intentions. I chewed on this last one, especially. If it had been a young, attractive woman, I would have been more on guard. But her appearance, like that of a friendly 3rd grade teacher who just wants to tell you about the book fair, had been remarkably disarming.
At last, the van came to a stop. I leaned over and glanced up out the window. To my surprise and relief, I saw a faded hanging sign, one with the unmistakable shape of a plane on it. The building we stopped in front of was the sketchiest, smallest, and dirtiest airport hotel I had ever seen. But it was, in fact, some kind of lodging establishment. It was only fifteen feet wide or so, and three or four stories up, sandwiched in a row of other similar establishments that dripped and smoked and bulged and sprouted blackened wires and old AC compressors.
My erstwhile captors groaned and complained as they heaved the girls’ very heavy and very bulky suitcases up to the half room that functioned as the lobby and front desk. Then, they simply drove off into the darkness, leaving me with an older, jaded-looking man who seemed the proprietor. He was very unhappy that all I had on me was a credit card and gave me some kind of a talking-to, which, of course, I understood none of. When he was done, I simply smiled and shrugged and motioned that I had no cash on me whatsoever.
Resigned, the man muttered and walked me back out into the alley, where he pointed up the street toward a dilapidated ATM. To my great surprise, one of my cards worked. The clerk took something like $15 from me in Chinese yuan and then took me up to my room.
By this point, I was exhausted and more than ready to pass out on the little bed. But even though disarming middle-aged Chinese school teachers had not been on my threat radar, bedbugs definitely were. My wife and I had already faced them a couple of times, an unfortunate but common outcome of living in refugee communities in Louisville’s South End. I had learned the hard way the vital importance of always checking the sheets and seams of the mattress near the head of the bed for the tell-tale black spotting and little shiny bumps that indicate an infestation.
As soon as I knelt down and pulled back the sheet, I knew it was bad. There was not only widespread black spotting, but lots of the little reddish-brown bumps as well, evidence that baby bedbugs were growing. That meant the grown-up ones were also nearby, ready to munch on my Yankee blood as soon as I fell asleep.
By the grace of God, my main concern in that moment was not how to avoid being a midnight snack for bedbugs, but how to avoid accidentally infesting the home of the missionaries we were on our way to stay with. They’d had such a rough go of it already and were currently alone, the only missionaries in their city of several million. The last thing they needed was their missions pastor to bless them with a stubborn infestation of Guangzhou bloodsuckers.
So, I hatched a plan. I remembered that bedbugs don’t travel on bodies. They travel on clothes and luggage. So, I piled the bags up high on a table in the far corner. Then, I made the decision that the most loving thing to do was to sleep naked with my clothes for morning safely hung up in the shower. The bugs may get a free meal, but they would not get a free ride to Western China.
I fell asleep remembering a Korean friend from Bible college who was petrified of spiders and had to sleep on an old mattress on the dorm floor one night. Terrified, she poured out her heart to God in prayer, asking for angelic protection from the bugs – and awoke in the morning to see a dozen nighttime arachnids and insects seemingly struck dead by the angel of the Lord, legs up in the air, forming a little ring around the mattress where she had slept. Perhaps the deliverer of Hezekiah and my Korean friend would guard me as well from my own little army of six-legged foes.
I slept remarkably well considering these bleak surroundings, and woke up downright refreshed. I didn’t notice any dead bugs in a ring around me, but neither did I notice any bites or blood streaks on the sheets. I scanned my body for bugs, hopped in the shower, dressed, and went downstairs to greet the same grumpy man who had welcomed me the night before. He offered me some pork bawza dumplings. Anytime you get to have some form of pork for breakfast, things are on the upswing.
From there, things were remarkably smooth. Back to the airport. On to Beijing, where I met up with the two gals from my church. Then, on to our destination in Western China. The girls got their stuff there safely, I got to visit a family on the field who had not had anyone come to visit them yet, and – God be praised – I did not infest their apartment with bedbugs.
On a later trip, we visited some Chinese friends in Guangzhou and had a wonderful time, seeing a very different side of the city and the culture than I had on that fateful night when I was traveling solo. But my wife and I still laugh (and shudder) as we think about that night when I rode that sketchy second van down into the bowels of the city, thinking I was getting kidnapped by some kind of East Asian mafia.
Thankfully, it was not a kidnapping, only a relatively modest con job, one where the disarming lunch lady and her associates duped unwitting passengers into staying somewhere they’d never have chosen to stay willingly. It had that slimy deceptive feel to it, you know the one, like when that free breakfast suddenly turns into a wild eyed attempt to sell you a timeshare. Except that even timeshare presentations don’t mean you have to sleep as naked sacrificial tribute to the bugs.
And yet, considering the various pieces that could have gone very wrong, overall I felt I had escaped relatively unscathed. I determined that next time I’m stuck in an airport quickly shutting down, I’ll just pay the outrageous rate to stay in the legit airport hotel. That day would, in fact, come, many years later, far away in frozen Munich, dragging my exhausted kids in tow. But that is a tale for another post and another day.
For now, good night, sleep tight, and well, you know the rest…
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? We need to raise 23k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Every believer who shares the gospel has a relationship or two with unbelievers that they don’t quite know what to do with. This might be a family member, a friend, or a coworker, someone who has heard the gospel many times, yet has not embraced it. Their bearing toward the gospel can run the spectrum from super friendly to somewhat hostile, but for whatever reason, they still want to be in regular contact with you. Or, in the case of family or coworkers, they are somewhat stuck in a relationship with you.
For my American readers, today is July 4th, Independence Day. That means you may even today find yourself at a cookout with just the sort of person I’m describing.
The question is, what should our posture be toward these sorts of people? Should we go on sharing the gospel when they seem so, well, hardened? Should we keep investing precious time and relational energy into those who have rejected the gospel so many times, especially when there are others who have never heard?
The answer, I believe, is a nuanced yes. In this post, I want to share how I have tried to navigate this over the years, in hopes that these principles and practical suggestions might prove helpful to others also wrestling with this.
First, we should aim to be sure that the gospel these individuals have rejected is actually the gospel, and not a misunderstanding of it. Far too often, we think someone has rejected the gospel when they’re actually rejecting a caricature of it. Remember, lost people are spiritually dead. Dead people do not naturally and easily comprehend the meaning of the good news you are sharing with them. They misconstrue what we are saying constantly. It often takes a lot of repetition before it becomes clear that they are rejecting the gospel from a place of having firmly grasped its message. Even Paul asks for prayer that he might make his gospel message clear (Col 4:4). But lost people can reach a place of rejection from understanding. As one of my Central Asian friends recently said to me when discussing how Jesus takes our curse upon himself, “I’m a Muslim and not a Christian, but wow, I can see how this is the heart of the Bible right here.”
He sees and understands the heart of the Bible. But he doesn’t believe it. Since that’s the case, what do I do with him?
This brings me to my second point. If this person is still open to spiritual conversation, then from here, I’m still going to aim to regularly seed my conversation with biblical truth. If, at this point, my friend has heard the message of the gospel clearly a good number of times, I will often back off from repeatedly pressing to the center of the gospel itself, instead looking for opportunities to inject all kinds of other aspects of the truth into our conversations. My hope in doing this is to impress upon my friend how the gospel affects and transforms everything else. I want to focus on the fruit of the gospel, the power and change that the gospel and the rest of God’s truth bring, in hopes that my friend will then want to revisit the gospel itself from one of these different angles.
Paul reminds the Romans that God’s kindness is meant to lead them to repentance (Rom 2:4). It may be that some simple but genuine remarks upon God’s kindness in a conversation are what lead to breakthrough. Or, it may be talking about how the faith transforms marriage and parenting. Or, how eternity and resurrection give us an answer for the countless desires we have that in this life will never be fulfilled. Sometimes it feels unnatural or redundant to revisit God, Man, Christ, Response yet again, but there are a thousand other angles of truth I can touch on in conversation that can strengthen and support that central refrain.
Injecting my conversation with spiritual truth also gives me a sense of whether or not my friend or relative wants to get into the claims of the gospel in this particular moment or setting. Believers can, with practice, learn how to naturally and tactfully fold spiritual truth into our everyday conversations. And every time we do that, it functions like an indirect invitation. If we are continually and graciously opening the door like this, there is no need to force unbelievers through it. If they are ready and willing, they will often take the conversation to the next step – and sometimes even reveal the specific questions they are wrestling with. This approach is a great way to not only see if unbelievers are open to spiritual conversation but also to keep the conversations in a place where our friend or relative feels that they consented to once again discussing these weighty and personal things.
For long-term relationships, this sense of consenting to the spiritual conversation is very important. We want to avoid being seen as the person at work or family gatherings who forces gospel conversation on others against their will. In the long run, this type of posture will serve more to close doors than open them. Rather, we want others to see us as those who genuinely care for them, genuinely believe the gospel, and truly enjoy speaking about Jesus.
Third, when someone has repeatedly rejected the gospel through my words, I want to double down on winning them with my life. As Peter says about wives married to unbelievers,
Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.
– 1 Peter 3:1-2
We must use words to make sure that the unbelievers in our lives have clearly understood the gospel. But after that point, there are times when it is not only appropriate, but even faithful to focus on displaying the gospel to them ‘without a word.’ Similar to seeding our conversations with other aspects of biblical truth, we can show by our lives and actions the power and the difference that the gospel makes.
One refugee friend who came to faith when I was a newlywed told me that observing my marriage was a big part of how the gospel came to make sense for him. I was surprised by this, since we were so new at the whole marriage thing, but I praised God for it nonetheless. This brother and I had argued about the gospel for months on end. At times, I was convinced we were getting nowhere. But the whole time, he was not just arguing, but also watching.
This point helps us know what to focus on when we’re not sure what to do next with an unbelieving friend who has rejected the gospel. But it’s also particularly helpful for family and friends who have made it clear to us that the door is closed for any conversation about spiritual things. What do we do with that kind of relationship? In spite of all the pushback against that “preach the gospel, when necessary use words,” quote, the fact is that our lives do, in fact, ‘preach’ something. At least in the fact that they powerfully illustrate, apply, and argue for what we’ve already verbalized and would like to verbalize again.
Fourth, we should consider how to stay in relationship with unbelievers who have rejected the gospel, even while we prioritize others who are more open. We are called to redeem the time and untold numbers Jesus’ sheep are out there, just waiting to hear his voice (Col 4:3, John 10:16). We should not be spending all our time on those who have clearly heard and clearly rejected the gospel. At the same time, we do not want to cut off those who have heard and rejected and who are still open to relationship with us. How should we thread this needle?
One practical way to do this is to have regular gatherings that are open to all. These sorts of gatherings are places where you can always invite that stubborn or seemingly hard-hearted unbelieving friend, even if most of your time is spent elsewhere investing in those who are showing a genuine openness. When we were doing refugee ministry in the US, we hosted weekly community meals together with our community group. This was a time when we could invite all of our unbelieving friends for a no-expectations gathering of food and community. Similarly, when I was an English teacher in Central Asia, we had a weekly conversation cafe. If I didn’t feel I should prioritize a certain friend who had heard and rejected the gospel, I nevertheless had a time when the relationship could be maintained, and we could see each other.
Because the Holy Spirit is sovereign over salvation, not me, I want to keep the relationship going in the chance that, defying expectations, this person really is seeking the truth. Regular gatherings of this sort mean I have a place to invite all of them to, even while the bulk of my time goes to prioritizing those friends who are responsive to the truth.
The other advantage of having regular ‘bucket times’ like this is that unbelievers can, in this way, be exposed to believing community. This could have been a point by itself, since there is great power and wisdom in getting our unbelieving friends and family into places where they can see Christian friendships displayed. The Bible says our love for one another proves the incarnation and proves that we are Jesus’ disciples (John 13:35, 17:21). That’s one powerful apologetic. Also, we never know if exposure to some other believer with very different gifts than we have might be the key that leads to breakthrough for that unbeliever we’ve made so little progress with.
Fifth, we can continue to pray for those unbelievers who have repeatedly rejected the gospel, those whom we just don’t know what to do with. I remember reading how George Müller prayed for decades for one of his friends’ sons to believe. He didn’t give up praying for this young man, even after so many years had passed. Decades later, he repented and believed. There is great power in persistent prayer, even for those for whom we see no hope that they will ever believe. Spiritually, they are no harder to the gospel than we were before we believed. One sovereign word from God is all that is needed to break their resistance and to flood their hearts with the love of Christ. We might not know if we can or should say another word about the gospel to certain individuals. But we can keep praying for them. If they are still alive, the verdict is not yet out on their soul.
Sixth, and last, there is a category in scripture for unbelievers who reject the gospel and are therefore to be cut off by us, though still in hopes that they might be open at some point in the future. Jesus calls them ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and in other places commands the disciples to wipe the dust off their feet in protest against their rejection (Matt 7:6, 10:14). It seems that there is a kind of evil and violent rejection of the gospel message that can occur, one that responds to pearls of gospel glory with fangs and violence or scandalously shameful rejection. The points I’ve made above are not for this kind of person, perhaps with the exception of persevering prayer. No, the purpose of this post has been to help us with those unbelievers who want to or have to stay in some kind of peaceful relationship with us.
For long-term relationships with unbelievers, seek to make sure the gospel is clearly understood. Seek to saturate your conversations with all kinds of spiritual truth. Seek to win them with your lives. Seek to invite them into community even when you can’t prioritize them. And pray for them with perseverance.
I am deeply troubled about my unbelieving friends who have heard the gospel so many times yet have not bowed the knee to Jesus. Like my Central friend who can pinpoint the heart of the Bible, I know that their situation is a very dangerous one. They have been exposed to so much light, and if they ultimately reject it, their fate will be worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. And I will have been to them the aroma of death (2 Cor 2:15-16).
And yet, at the same time, I’m so thankful for my unbelieving friends who keep coming back around, even though they’ve rejected the gospel so many times. I desperately hope that if they are still open to friendship with me, then there may be some part of them that is also open to friendship with Jesus. The verdict on their soul is not out yet.
No, if they’re still living, there’s still hope.
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? We need to raise 26k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
The earliest known painting of a biblical scene comes from a house in Pompeii, the Roman vacation town destroyed in a volcanic eruption in A.D. 79. Just as wisdom is one of the emphases of this blog, this first known biblical painting also focuses on wisdom, depicting one of the most well-known scenes where its power is put on display. The painting (which you can see here) is unmistakable to anyone who knows their Old Testament. It shows King Solomon discovering the identity of the true mother by shrewdly calling for the baby in dispute to be cut in two, which is recounted in 1st Kings 3:16-28.
In an unexpected addition, it seems the artist also painted Socrates and Aristotle into the bottom left-hand corner of the painting. These two foundational Greek philosophers are observing the scene from the margins, looking on in admiration or astonishment as the elevated Solomon dispenses his wise judgment.
What this curious painting seems to tell us is that the Bible and its teaching were present even in this holiday town beloved by the Empire’s rich and influential citizens. The fact that it was painted on the wall of a home like this likely means that there were well-to-do Jews, proselytes, or God-fearers who lived in Pompeii, perhaps even early Christians. I think it likely that whoever commissioned this painting was from a Greek or Roman gentile background, hence the inclusion of Socrates and Aristotle. Viewed in this light, the painting is a kind of apologetic, arguing that the apex of Greco-Roman philosophy points, from the margins as it were, to the superior wisdom found in the revealed Word of the God. This would echo the kind of approach that Paul takes when preaching in Athens at the Areopagus – “As some of your own poets have said” (Acts 17:28).
If a gentile was the one who had this scene painted so prominently in his home, it could be a way of him arguing that his believing in the God of the Jews was not, in fact, a betrayal of the Western pursuit of wisdom, but rather, its unexpected and true fulfilment.
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? We need to raise 26k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this 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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
