My God is a God of peace, and he loves his sons He stands at heart’s door, guest of whosoever wants His fatherly warm embrace, open to his children His words are like a joyful flower garden If any walk in his way, he also will be God’s guest Two thousand years ago, his blood he sacrificed Only Christ is God, truth, purity, and generosity If a disciple of Jesus, you’ll not perish in any difficulty How happy I am when I hear God’s Word! The water of faith fills my mind and my heart
This is my translation of another poem by the late local poet, Shepherd H, which focuses on the peace that the Father gives, the sacrifice and exclusivity of Jesus, and the effect of God’s word upon the heart of a believer. The poem also contains several biblical images that are also very Central Asian.
The first is that of hospitality. Central Asian culture highly values warm and lavish hospitality, and, in this poem, God is portrayed as both potential guest and potential host. He is ready to come and honor whosoever would open their heart to host him. And he is ready in turn to host any who would walk in his way. Hospitality in Central Asia is often reciprocal like this. One family hosts another and then gets invited by that same family in turn, in a long-term contest of outdoing one another in showing honor.
This theme connects with passages like Revelation 3, where Christ knocks at the door and offers to come in and eat with the one who would repent. It also echoes the book of Luke and elsewhere, where Christ is portrayed as the great host of God’s kingdom.
The second Central Asian image is that of a joyful flower garden. In the high desert browns of this part of the world, the locals adore their small plots of green grass and bright flowers. They often give lavish care to these little oases of greens and pinks and yellows where they will sit on summer evenings sipping chai and munching on cucumbers and sunflower seeds. The words of God are compared to this kind of garden. A place of joy, life, refreshment, and refuge.
This theme, of course, echoes Eden, which in turn is echoed by the temple and the promised land, and is fulfilled in the new heavens and new earth.
In a similar vein, the word of God is also compared to water, water of faith that fills the poet’s mind and his heart, just as locals might drench their trees’ roots morning and evening to keep them alive, healthy, and even fruitful in the deathly summer heat. The fig trees, for example, eagerly soak up the water and then go on to give the sweetest of fruit even in the hottest part of the year. So the believer delights to soak up God’s word and, in turn, bears the fruit of the Spirit even in the midst of suffering – fruit such as the title of this poem, peace.
This final theme reminds us of Jesus in John 4, the living water. Of this water, Jesus promises, “The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
An internal spring of overflowing eternal life? A gift? No wonder the poet says, “Only Christ is… generosity.” And no wonder he is so happy.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
A few years ago, my kids and I began a weekly daddy date rhythm. The idea is a simple one. Each Saturday, one of my kiddos gets to go out to lunch or dessert with dad, to a restaurant or cafe of their choosing (within reason, that is).
Somewhere in the past, I read a Christian blogger who recommended touching base on three F’s during this kind of outing: friends, fears, and faith. I’ve found this to be a helpful framework, and most weeks will try to ask questions in these categories, even if we don’t spend the bulk of our time discussing them. Some weeks, my kids don’t have much to say on any of these fronts. But other weeks, really fruitful conversations ensue, for example, about things they’re feeling anxious about.
I’ll also often ask my kids if there’s anything practical they need right now. With how fast kids grow and wear out or break their stuff, it seems there’s almost always some item of clothing, footwear, backpack, or glasses-related thing that it’s time to replace again, but which mom and dad didn’t yet have on their radar. Of course, this part of the conversation often turns to things a given kiddo wants rather than needs, which usually gets gently punted, but which also provides valuable data for future gift ideas or surprises.
I know that this kind of outing, once every three weeks or so, is not as important as the daily rhythms, such as meals together, spontaneous affirmation, consistent affection and training, and bedtime devotions. But I hope that over the years, these dates will contribute to our kids feeling seen, heard, delighted in, known, and loved well by their dad.
To be honest, it’s also good for my heart to make sure I have a structure like this built in, where I slow down and give individual attention to each of my kids. It’s far too easy for me to be merely present as a dad, but not really engaged.
An added bonus in all this is that we end up discovering places to eat that become family favorites. One such place is our local Keto restaurant. Yes, even here in our corner of Central Asia, Keto is a thing. For those who might not be familiar with this approach to food, a Keto meal is high in good fat and protein with low or no sugars or carbs. Many will adopt a Keto diet because when you eat like this consistently, it pushes the body to burn fat for its fuel instead of sugars, which, when done wisely, can lead to healthy weight loss.
But our family appreciates Keto food for a different reason. Our daughter has Type 1 diabetes. That means that every single meal or even snack involves calculating how many carbs she’ll eat and giving her just the right amount of insulin so that her blood sugar neither dangerously plummets nor heads off careening into the glucose stratosphere. Those familiar with diabetes know the low-grade toll that doing this every day, every single meal, can take, life-saving work though it is.
But there is one restaurant in Caravan City that I can take my daughter to, where she can rest from this otherwise mandatory work. Yes, all the meals and even the ice cream at our local Keto place are designed so that the carbs are so low as to be negligible. Add to this that the food is actually also extremely flavorful, and you can see why it’s one of her (and my) favorite places to go for a daddy lunch date.
This father’s heart delights to see his daughter simply free to order anything she wants from the menu, something that is almost never the case for her. Even with the correct amount of insulin, we’ve learned the hard way that certain kinds of carbs simply play havoc with her blood sugar, which means we end up carefully rationing (or saying no to) much of the food that kids her age are naturally drawn to. She bears with these limitations well most of the time. But the grief at not being able to eat like all her friends do does build up, and sometimes overflows. As it should.
Kids were not meant to have their pancreases killed by their own immune systems so that they could no longer make their own insulin. This is not the way it was supposed to be. Sometimes, on a particularly hard day, my daughter will cry out through her tears, “I hate diabetes!” So do we, love, so do we.
Because of this, it’s such a joy to see her free in this way, laughing and munching on a Keto burger or getting cheesecake-flavored ice cream all over her face. It’s a small preview of what one day we know will be true of her if she continues to wrestle with her faith and is truly born again, that she will be given a resurrected body, one that includes a brand new, eternally perfect pancreas. Yes, in the feasts of the New Jerusalem, there will be no toilsome carb counting and insulin calculating, knowing that even if we get it ‘right’, some curveball of hormones or device failure or who knows what could still lead to a high or a 2 am emergency low treatment. No, there will be none of this. Just freedom. Freedom and holy enjoyment of God’s good provision.
I know that the owner of this Keto restaurant did not open his restaurant just for us, just for my daughter. But it sure feels that way when we eat there. Who could have guessed that we would be so spoiled as to have this kind of place in Central Asia, and in the very neighborhood where we work and school and worship? No, the Islamic restaurant owner is probably just passionate about health and making a profit. May his business be blessed, and he someday come to know Jesus.
But I also know that the sovereignty of God is detailed enough, complex enough, that one of the many reasons he would ordain a Muslim man to open up a Keto restaurant in Caravan City is for my daughter’s and my encouragement. How very kind. How very much like a good and generous father.
The kind of father I long to be.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
It was a hot and dusty August seventeen years ago when I became a yogurt water drinker. For my first nine months in Central Asia, I had steered clear of the stuff. Like most Westerners, I couldn’t quite figure out what to do with the concept of drinking yogurt, complete with ice chunks, dill, and a pungent, smoky-sour-salty flavor.
But we do not live in a world where our tastes or dislikes are forever fixed and unchangeable. No, all it takes is the right mysterious combination of factors and, suddenly, we love something we used to hate. I never cared for eggplant, for example. But a Lebanese restaurant I once ate at grilled it so perfectly crisp, so expertly salted and spiced, placed on top of a salad itself bursting with flavor, that I found myself really enjoying that bite of eggplant. After that experience of tasting the delights of what English speakers in other lands call aubergine, I was a changed man. Now, I even enjoy the mushy stuff. The same thing happened to me with mushrooms the first time I had them on top of pizza.
It seems there’s something about experiencing a thing in just the right context that can pull a 180 for the mind, affections, and taste buds, and unlock previously unknown delights.
The context that made me a yogurt water drinker was a miserable one. It was mid-August, well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 °C), and I was taking an intercity bus trip. I was on my way from Poet City to a tiny village with a name that translates as ‘Matches’ (the kind that come in a box) to visit a strange mullah friend I had there. This man was strange because he was the only devout Muslim I had ever met who subscribed to a minority view that the Qur’an teaches that Jesus actually did die on the cross. He was also strange because of his over-the-top poetic proclamations he would make in place of normal conversation or even the normal Central Asian honorable verbosity.
“You are my brother and your mother is my aunt and I will plant a garden for you in my heart and place a chair in the garden where you will sit and little butterflies will fly around youuuu, ahaha!”
Like I said, this friend was strange. But after I gave him a Bible in his language on his previous visit and we pulled an all-nighter discussing its contents, he requested I bring him one in Arabic and English also. I was willing to endure the cringy proclamations of his affection for me if it meant getting to talk more with this mullah about Jesus.
In order to get to Matches village, I first needed to go to the bus terminal, where drivers would holler out the name of their destination city repeatedly in a sort of chant. “Philly-Philly-Philly-Philly-Philly-Phillyyy!” for example. I boarded the bus for the city closest to my destination, paid $5 or so, and went to sit while the driver waited for the bus to fill up with other passengers.
It only took a half hour or so for the bus to fill up enough to justify the trip, but by that time the backs of all of our shirts were drenched with sweat. The bus rumbled and groaned onto the simmering intercity roads, and we were off. There was no AC in this bus, so most of us kept our windows cracked open. Even the hot blaze of the summer afternoon wind was better than no air at all. It was not long before all of us in that bus became, as I once told the story to my kids and their classmates, the human equivalents of soggy dumplings.
The drive was about two hours long. On the way, we passed melon and sunflower fields, little rivers, parched brown mountainsides, and the muted greens of their squat scrub oaks. I spotted numerous storks as well, the leggy pilgrims, as the locals call them, and the massive nests they build this time of year on top of the electricity towers. Even in the fever heat of summer, this high desert land was not without its beauty.
About halfway through the drive, we pulled over at a little dusty rest stop in an area where dry reeds lined the sides of the road.
Some things feel the same no matter what culture you’re in. Whether getting off a midnight Greyhound in Milwaukee or an old Toyota Coaster bus in Central Asia, the body language of passengers thankful for a break is the same. Slowly but surely, all of us soggy human dumplings ambled off the bus, off to the squatty potties, and into the plastic chairs set up on a cement patio nearby. This porch area was shaded by a roof made of woven reeds, a criss-cross pattern that I noticed looked just like those used for the village house walls in the Melanesia of my childhood. There were also a few ceiling fans, nobly doing their duty to shove the hot air around a little bit, in spite of the tremendous odds stacked against them,
I glanced around at the other passengers, mustachioed men in collared shirts and parachute pants and women in their head coverings and long, modest attire. We were cooked, no way around it. And there seemed to be nothing we could do about it.
Then, and without being asked, small plastic buckets were set on the little chai tables in front of each of us. The buckets were pink or blue, and each had its own little ladle. Inside the buckets was ice-cold yogurt water, sloshing around a big frozen chunk in the middle. As I’ve already said, I was at this point not a fan of yogurt water. But it was at least cold, perhaps the only cold thing for hundreds of miles…
So, I dipped the ladle in the creamy substance and put it to my lips.
Bliss.
Sweet, icy, creamy, sour bliss!
I drained my little bucket quickly, as did all the other happily slurping passengers. Every sip of that ice-cold yogurt water was like a little sip of heaven.
You know that Bible story from 1st Samuel where Jonathan eats wild honey during a battle and his eyes brighten? That’s a very good description of what that yogurt water did to me in my soggy dumpling state. My eyes (and my mood) certainly brightened. Even more, my taste buds were converted. What before had not been appetizing was now, because of a surprising yet effective context, suddenly and ever afterward delicious. I got back on that bus a changed man.
And that’s how I became a yogurt water drinker.
I often think back to that little roadside patio when I take a sip of yogurt water and still find myself enjoying it. How interesting that our natural tastes can be so thoroughly transformed and reversed. It gives me hope that someday I may be able to enjoy those good foods in God’s creation that I can’t yet endure. I’d love to be able to really enjoy super spicy foods, for example, though so far this hope has been in vain. Yes, I am one of those guys who needs to ask for the lowest level of spiciness when eating Indian or Thai food. I’m doing my best, but alas, I can’t seem to will my taste buds to do anything other than burn and protest.
However, it’s not just our natural senses that harbor this potential. We live in a world where our spiritual tastes can also be reversed. What to the natural man is bitter, the man with a new heart finds deliciously refreshing. If the power of a sweltering desert road trip can change me so that I enjoy something I had previously hated, how much more can the power of the Holy Spirit take sinners who deeply hate the aroma of the truth and make them into those who “taste and see that the Lord is good?”
I don’t lose hope for all my Western friends who still can’t stand the taste of yogurt water. Nor do I lose hope for my unbelieving friends who can’t stand the taste of God’s justice and grace. Turns out the taste buds of our tongues can be radically changed. So can the taste buds of our souls.
We are now fully funded for this next year on the field! We’re so thankful for so many who have given and prayed and sent us encouraging notes in this season of support raising. Of course, if you’d still like to contribute to our work, that is still helpful and you can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. Would you join us in thanking God for his generous provision?
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.
Ever wonder what was going on in Acts 14 when the Lystran crowds respond to a miraculous healing at the hands of Paul and Barnabas by proclaiming them Hermes and Zeus? Check out this helpful background context:
The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men. This phrase recalls a well-known mythological story. One day Jupiter (Zeus) and his son Mercury (Hermes) disguised themselves as mortals and visited a thousand homes in Phrygia. Each denied them hospitality until Baucis and her husband, Philemon, opened their humble home to the gods. After feeding the guests with their best food, the elderly couple soon realized they were hosting divine visitors after the wine flagon constantly refilled itself. When Jupiter and Mercury warned them about an impending flood that would destroy their wicked neighbors, Baucis and Philemon fled to high ground. After the flood, their lone-standing home was transformed into a magnificent temple. When asked their one wish, Philemon and Baucis requested to die together. Many years later, while caring for the temple, the couple began to sprout leaves, and the two were simultaneously transformed into trees in the sight of their neighbors.
It is little wonder that Paul and Barnabas were treated as they were, for the crowd thought Jupiter and Mercury had possibly returned. Barnabas, as the older of the two, was undoubtedly identified as Jupiter, while Paul, as the speaker, was perceived to be Mercury, the messenger god.
-ESV Archaeology Study Bible, note on Acts 14:11-13
As it turns out, the locals in Lystra did have a category for a pair of normal-looking men showing up and performing miracles. Recalling this myth that allegedly recounted events from neighboring Phrygia, the Lystrans put two and two together and wrongly assumed that Paul and Barnabas were the gods come to visit in human guise once again.
What I’ve heard said of children can also apply to the unreached or unchurched unbelievers – they are wonderful observers, but terrible interpreters. This story demonstrates the importance of explaining the meaning of our actions to the unbelievers as quickly as possible. Otherwise, they will use their pagan worldviews to project shockingly wrong meanings onto even the ‘normal’ Christian things we’re doing.
During our season of doing refugee ministry and living in a poor apartment complex in Louisville, we had all kinds of people regularly coming in and out of our apartment. This was because we were hosting game nights, weekly community meals, and Bible studies. Imagine our shock when an older African-American friend and ally, Miss Mary, informed us that the word on the street was that we were running some kind of prostitution ring – and that my wife was the pimp!
Unbelievers will come up with all kinds of wild and crazy claims to try to make sense out of the things we’re doing in ministry. In one sense, this is not entirely surprising. Believers sharing the gospel and making disciples are, after all, like the apostles, turning the world upside down. Until the Holy Spirit grants spiritual sight, it’s hard to know what to make of this.
In addition to this, the story of this crowd’s reaction in Acts 14 also makes a subtle case for the necessity of mother-tongue ministry. I believe that trade language ministry, like Paul and Barnabas are doing here in Greek, is valid, biblical, and often effective. But here we see how quickly things go wrong in part because Paul and Barnabas don’t understand what the crowds, speaking in Lycaonian, are saying about them. Once they find out, things have gotten so out of hand that their attempts to shut it all down almost result in blasphemy and do result in Paul ultimately getting stoned. Yikes.
No wonder Paul later asks for prayer that he might make his gospel proclamation clear (Col 4:4).
We should find out any day now if we’ve met our goal and are 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 category of Unreached People Group has recently been getting some (justified) pushback. This is true for multiple reasons.
First, the term has been defined by missiologists primarily in sociological, ethno-linguistic terms, not in biblical-theological terms, which undermines its claim to be the way to apply the Bible’s panta ta ethne (all the nations)emphasis. See more on this here.
Second, even a cursory reading of Paul and Luke shows that their main categories for the unreached are primarily geographical, not ethnic and linguistic (Acts 1:8, Acts 19:10, Rom 15:23). In our circles, David Platt has been influential in restoring some of this emphasis on reaching both unreached peoples and places.
Third, the category of UPG has been applied to so many different kinds of lost people that need evangelizing that it is in danger of losing much of its meaning. Do global youth count as a UPG? Because I’ve been to a gathering where that claim was made from the platform. Or, how about Canadian hockey players? When everything is an unreached people group, nothing is. The term is being robbed of its meaning through sloppy usage.
Fourth, even the official UPG definition of less than 2% evangelical is, in the end, somewhat arbitrary. This threshold was chosen as the benchmark by which an indigenous church was considered self-sustaining and able to reach the rest of its people. But this percentage was only chosen by a committee after the original 1970s sociology 20% threshold was deemed too difficult (Hadaway, p.17).
All this means that the authority of this category of UPG has often been overstated and misapplied. It is not the biblical category for understanding the unreached, nor the only way to understand the barriers that prevent certain groups from hearing the gospel.
When it comes to what is the best matrix or lenses for understanding who the unreached really are, three things need to be acknowledged.
First, churches and mission agencies that seek to be good stewards of their people and funds need a way to prioritize this kind of work over that kind of work. And to do this, they will need a faithful and practical way to understand and categorize lostness. The concept of UPG has, in this way, been a helpful improvement over the older modern state category of organizing missions efforts. When you only view the world through a political modern state framework, there really are going to be thousands of ‘hidden peoples’ that get overlooked.
Second, merely discarding this kind of lens that prioritizes ethno-linguistic groups that have little or no access to the gospel will likely mean that the vast majority of missions funding and personnel keep flowing to those peoples and places that already have strong indigenous churches. It’s still only 1% of missions money and 3% of missions personnel that are going to UPGs, while 99% of funding and 97% of missionaries serve in contexts that are considered ‘reached.’ This imbalance still exists even with all the hype around the idea of UPGs that has been there for the past few decades. I don’t know how this is possible. But jettisoning the UPG category does not seem like it will help this gross imbalance of resources.
Third, the Bible does not have one lens or category by which it defines or tracks the gospel’s global spread; Instead, it has a handful. One of these is ‘peoples’ or ‘nations’ (Matt 28:19). Clearly, the main difference in view here with this terminology is what we would now call ethnicity, even if these terms can also be used by the biblical authors to refer to all the Gentiles in general. But another lens that the Bible uses is ‘all languages’ (Is 66:18, Dan 7:14). That means that language is another valid barrier recognized by the Bible that God will overcome. Geography and political borders, as mentioned above, seem to be a further kind of lens, valid enough, it would seem, to be the main way Paul was thinking about places being reached or not. Ultimately, I find it instructive that the best-known verse on this subject, Revelation 7:9, includes not one, but multiple categories of lostness:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
Because the Bible’s emphasis seems to be that the gospel will overcome all the barriers dividing lost humanity, wisdom suggests putting all of these biblical categories in our toolbelt and not arbitrarily limiting ourselves to one.
In our region of Central Asia, one unreached people group shares the same language as another group considered reached. Here, differences in ethnicity and religion mean the gospel is not bridging from one group to the other.
But we also have minority people groups in our area that share the same ethnic name as the majority group, but that have their own, distinct mother tongue. Here, the barrier to the gospel is language, not ethnic self-identification.
However, there are also places like North Korea, where a political border prevents gospel access to an unreached population that shares ethnicity and language with its kinfolk to the south.
Friends, the ethnicities, language groups, tribes, and places that are currently without a witness, believers, or churches are that way for a reason. They are exceptionally hard to reach. We need all of these biblical (and practical) lenses to, first, not overlook them, but also to keep them prioritized for the long-term effort it will take to see them actually reached and worshipping Jesus.
No, not in some frenetic and misguided way to get Jesus to come back more quickly, but as a way to truly fulfill the Great Commission, which is still our marching orders. Matthew 24:14 has been abused. But that does not rob it of its actual meaning, which is that the Church’s posture will be one of preaching the gospel to all the nations when Christ returns. Paul’s holy ambition was to take the gospel to places where Christ had not already been named (Rom 15:20). Even as we seek to thread the interpretive needle right, we must not lose this emphasis.
To do this well, we need to recognize the multiple lenses the Bible gives us to think about concepts such as the unreached. If we need to put the category of UPG back in its proper place, then so be it. But let’s make sure it still has a seat at the table.
We only need to raise 2k ($160 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.
This may sound odd, but if you ever plan on baptizing someone – meaning you yourself are the one to put them under the water – then you would be wise to get some practice beforehand.
All kinds of things can go wrong when immersing someone in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just to mention a few of the mishaps that have occurred when I’ve baptized others, there was that one time when we baptized someone in moving water but didn’t think about how she was facing upstream. This meant that the river water not only went up right up her nose but, she claimed, all the way up into her brain.
Then there was the time we planned a baptism service in January with the assurance that the host would heat the water in the kiddie pool outside. After we arrived, he informed us there had been no electricity all morning. That meant the new believers coming up so symbolically out of the icy water also came up shrieking like Nazgul.
Another time, we failed to get a local believer’s kneecaps under the water when we dunked him. Hopefully, that doesn’t mean he’ll be raised without these crucial joints in the new heavens and new earth.
Neither am I alone in committing these kinds of baptism blunders. It’s not uncommon for the baptizer to botch the trinitarian formula in the excitement of the moment and suddenly find himself sounding like a modalist. Nor is it uncommon for the baptizee to forget to plug their nose and bend their knees, the latter of which means their legs fly up as their torso goes down, while the baptizer scrambles to not themself get pulled under. Even worse, baptizees who wear white garments experience a real-life version of that terrible dream where, for some reason, you’re in front of the church wearing only your skivvies.
All of this is exactly why my pastoral ministry professor in college took our class out to a local church so we could practice ‘baptizing’ each other. He warned us of many of the common blunders, taught us a tried-and-true technique for the actual physical dunking itself, then had us practice on one another. This was solid training, if somewhat unorthodox, the kind of hands-on activity that ends up serving you very well in ministry when you have to baptize someone for real.
No, we didn’t actually say the trinitarian formula when practicing, so we were careful in that way to not be disrespectful toward this weighty and beautiful ceremony. But yes, it was also a lot of fun. I think I got ‘baptized’ by my classmates five times that day. I am a Baptist after all, so I know that there’s only one dunking that actually counts. All the others before (or after) the one-and-done sign of the new birth are merely the equivalent of a rather short bath.
But you know one thing that training didn’t talk about? What to do with the microphone.
Turns out, my very first baptism blunder was dropping the microphone in the baptismal water. Thanks be to God (and to whatever deacon or sound guy set it up); it was a cordless mic. Here’s how it happened.
Reza*, my refugee friend, had at long last agreed to be baptized. As with his journey to faith, this involved lots of intense discussions. In the end, we got an exception from the elders so that a pastor could do a membership meal with him instead of an official interview. And Reza would also be free to swear by the church covenant and statement of faith orally, rather than signing them. Both of these decisions were, I felt, wise and kind concessions given the fact that ‘interviews’ and signing ‘confessions’ were so closely related to secret police interrogations in my friend’s culture and family background.
The Sunday night of the baptism finally came, and Reza and I found ourselves alone in the old stone church basement. Reza was wearing a poofy white baptism robe with dark clothing underneath. I was also wearing a similar robe, but underneath I had on a borrowed set of one of the elders’ big rubber waders.
I was excited. Reza had come such a long way. His sustained resistance to church membership had been much more of a struggle than I had expected. But he was clearly born again. So, he needed to follow Jesus in step one of discipleship: go under the waters of baptism.
Since he was the first person I’d ever baptized, I was mentally running through the steps I’d learned from my class. Reza, for his part, was freaking out.
He knew that once news of this step reached his dad, there would be blowback. Even though his dad was an agnostic leftist refugee on another continent, it would still bring shame on the family for Reza to do something so drastic as leave his sophisticated cultural identity to become a Christian – and a Baptist at that. Sure enough, soon after the baptism, his dad did cut off all his financial support for Reza.
I did my best to reassure Reza that he was doing the right thing, that any time we follow Jesus in risky obedience, joy and freedom follow. It didn’t seem like he fully believed me.
However, before we knew it, time was up. We were being summoned up the little winding stairs into the old baptismal. Reza’s resolve seemed to strengthen as he walked up the stairs, nervous but seemingly determined to go through with it.
The little tank we waded into was from the early 1900s. It was a hexagonal shape, with the front half of the hexagon facing the congregation. It had a foot or so of a glass railing at waist height, and two white wooden pillars at the front hexagon corners that held up the roof. The back wall of the hexagon was an old painting that attempted to portray a Jordan River scene of reeds and flowing water in faded blues, greens, and browns.
Reza was handed the cordless mic first. He took the manuscript of his testimony in his hand, gripped the mic in the other, and looked up at the crowd. Then he started reading.
Steadily, and with growing conviction and volume, Reza read of how he had been raised by his political and irreligious family, how he had gone deep into fundamentalist Islam as a teenager, how he had experimented with Hinduism and Buddhism in college, and how he had at last fallen into a hedonistic lifestyle after arriving in the US. Systematically, he laid out how all of these other paths had led to utter emptiness. Then he shared how he had learned about Jesus, how he had come to realize that the gospel was not only completely different from all other religious or philosophical systems, but true, and powerfully so.
When Reza ended his testimony, the room erupted in loud applause. A huge grin broke out on his face. Any sense of double-mindedness was now gone. He was ready.
I took the microphone, looking at my friend with deep affection and respect, and said,
“Reza, because of your profession of faith, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Then I turned, set the mic on the small ledge at the back of the baptismal, and turned to position myself correctly for the dunking.
Noises and shouts of alarm from the audience suddenly interrupted me. Before I could figure out what people were yelling about, I heard a loud PLOP.
I shot a glance down toward our feet and there was the mic, bubbling and slowly rotating on the bottom of the tank.
Oh no! I realized, I’ve dropped the mic!
Turns out that the little ledge behind me that I had set the mic on was not flat after all, but slightly sloped so that any water could find its way down and off of it and back into the tank. As with water, so with microphones, apparently. The mic had rolled in a quick semicircle and right into the drink.
Reza shrugged toward the crowd and shouted, “Eh, it happens!”
The crowd laughed, and I found myself both thankful for Reza’s charisma and struggling to bend over in my stiff rubber waders to get the mic. Snatching it, I quickly placed it somewhere more secure.
I was somewhat embarrassed but also laughing. It was simply too much of a joyous event to let a little mishap like that get in the way. So, I called out again, this time without the mic,
“Reza, because of your profession of faith, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!”
Reza put his left hand on his nose and gripped that arm’s wrist with his right hand so that I’d have a good handhold, just as we’d practiced. I put my other hand behind his back and set my stance so as not to drop him. He bent his knees and went under, white robes splaying and flowing out in the water. After what seemed to me a long moment, I pulled him back out.
Once more, there was thunderous applause. As well as more laughter. Then the congregation started singing a rousing a cappella Doxology.
Reza and I hugged and went, dripping, down to the basement, where we hugged again. He was beaming.
“Brother,” he said, “I have never been this happy in all my life. I am so happy right now, I am so alive. Obeying really does lead to joy! I’m so glad I did this. I love Jesus so much!”
It was one of those moments I will always remember. Every time I give the same kind of counsel to some other Central Asian believer who is afraid that obeying Jesus won’t be worth it, I’m transported back to that old stone church basement and to that scene of soggy Reza beaming in his big goofy baptismal robe. Yes, following Jesus in risky obedience will always lead to greater joy and greater freedom. Always.
The microphone, alas, did not make it. One of our pastoral assistants later informed me that this rather expensive mic could not be salvaged. Although they apparently held onto it for a while in hopes of framing it for me.
And, of course, it was a good many years before I could be involved in baptism conversations at that church without somebody getting in a joke about how I dropped the microphone into the baptismal water. As a young leader, it was good for my humility.
Should you, dear reader, ever find yourself needing to baptize someone, and suddenly feeling quite unprepared, here are a few very important and practical questions to keep in mind.
First, are they a true believer who can proclaim the gospel through their testimony?
Second, under the leadership of their pastor or missionary, are they being joined by baptism to a church or are they themselves the start of a new one?
Third, do they know how to plug the nose and bend the knees, and to not wear white clothes?
Fourth, are they facing downstream and in water that is somewhat warmer than a Siberian lake and deep enough to get all of them under?
Fifth, have you practiced the trinitarian formula enough so that you don’t end up baptizing like a heretic?
And finally, if mics are involved, do you have a plan for keeping them fully out of the water?
There are, of course, other important considerations for baptisms in general as well as on a case-by-case basis. But hopefully this list can get you started as well as highlight a few common and not-so-common blunders.
Go then, and baptize those new disciples. And don’t worry if you end up making some baptism blunders of your own. One way or another, get them under the water and pull them out again, and they’ll come up beaming, ready to risk for Jesus.
We only need to raise 3k ($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.
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.
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