Airport rules can often feel arbitrary and absurd. They vary greatly from one airport to another and even from one trip to another through the same airport. Travelers come emotionally prepared to endure certain dehumanizing procedures only to be caught off-guard by airport staff who have unexpectedly changed things – and are now annoyed that you don’t already know what you’re supposed to do.
Shoes on or shoes off when you go through the scanner? Passport only or boarding pass only, or both? To awkwardly look and attempt a smile at that little camera at the passport control booth or not? Bottles of water from the airport or the plane allowed into other parts of the airport or onto the plane? We try our best to keep our family hydrated in the parched land of 36,000 feet, but this last one and its ever-shifting yes, no, yes, yes, no!!! nature seems to always leave us scratching our heads.
This past year, it even led to quite the standoff between my wife and one member of airport staff, a battle of wills that has now made it into our family travel lore. Here’s how it went down.
We were getting off a flight from our Central Asian country and transiting through the Doha airport. This airport, like many in the Gulf region, is largely staffed not by Qataris but by workers from other countries. These professional SE Asians, S Asians, Africans, and others keep the airport masses efficiently humming along, often doing so with much more politeness than you’ll find at most American airports. Here, I recall a kind African lady who tried to convince us she could help us get out of the airport and to a city hotel during an unexpected 17-hour layover, even though this would have been illegal during those days of lingering pandemic restrictions. In the end, we opted not to take her up on her offer, a decision which had unexpected consequences of its own, involving matching luxury tracksuits of all things.
Toward the end of the hot and dry flight, the flight attendants had passed out bottles of water to all of the passengers. Naturally, we assumed that bottles of water handed out on the plane, a plane of the flagship carrier of the airport we were headed to, would be fine to bring into the airport. After all, the whole no liquids thing is to prevent terrorists from bringing exploding liquids onto the plane. So, this time we didn’t tell our kids to chug their water lest there be none to be found for the next several hours. Instead, since we were about to disembark, we all just put our unopened or slightly-sipped water bottles into our carry-on bags.
After a short trek from the plane to the transit area, we were met by an unexpected security scanner area. No big deal, we thought, as we put our carry-on bags onto the X-ray belt. But the respectful African man who was in charge of our line suddenly called my wife out in his thick Sub-Saharan English accent.
“Do you have wata in yo bags, ma’am?”
“Yes, they just gave us water on the plane.”
“Take it out, please.”
My wife proceeded to take out all of our bottles of water, which the man then lined up on the metal table after the X-ray machine. He then crossed his arms, staring at the water bottles suspiciously, then squinting his eyes at us.
“They just now gave us water on the plane,” my wife explained, “And these ones are for our kids because there wasn’t much to drink during the flight. Do we need to throw them out? They’re from the plane.”
“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am.”
“Excuse me?”
“Take a sip of da wata,” he said again, pointing with his chin.
It took both of us a moment to process the request. It seemed this airport security officer wanted my wife to take a sip of her water bottle to demonstrate that it wasn’t… poison?
Somewhat annoyed, my wife took a sip of her water bottle. Thankfully, she did not drop dead.
“Take anada sip of da wata, ma’am,” the man said next, nodding at the other water bottles.
“Why?” my wife countered.
“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am. Is fo yo children.”
“Yes, these other bottles of water are for my children.”
“Then take a sip of da wata, ma’am.”
“Of each of them?”
The man continued to stand there, insistently, waiting for my wife to prove like some kind of cup-bearer that our kids’ bottles of water from the plane were neither poisonous nor explosive.
Again, we were struggling to understand the thought process behind all this. Was this normal procedure? I’ve been traveling through airports my entire life and had never before witnessed this type of ritual. But also, our kids are, in some ways, germophobes. Despite my earnest appeals to reason, they will not drink after someone else, even if it’s their mom taking a small sip from their water bottle.
My wife, knowing this, and not a fan of unexpected pressurized situations like this one, was looking for a way out.
“I’ll just throw them all away.”
“No. Is fo yo children. Take anada sip of da wata.”
“No. I’ll just throw them away.”
“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am.”
“No. I’ll throw them away.”
“Is fo yo children.“
“…”
I’m not exactly sure how long this exchange went on, with my wife and this airport security man staring each other down like some kind of battle of immovable ancient titans.
Eventually, without breaking eye contact, my wife took a sip from each water bottle. I shushed our kids as they let out their germophobic protestations. Once again, my wife did not die, nor explode. And we finally moved past the security agent.
At which point my wife defiantly threw the water bottles in the trash can.
As we walked away and neared the Doha transit area with the creepy giant yellow teddy bear with a lamp coming out of its head, we tried to figure out what we had just witnessed.
But the absurdity of it all was overtaking me. I leaned over to my wife, smiling.
“Take a sip of da wata, ma’am. Is fo yo children,” I said, able to nail the accent because I’d heard the man say that phrase so many times.
She glared at me. I burst out laughing, as did the kids. Eventually, my wife cracked a smile as well.
Were you to hang out with our family, you might hear this particular quote thrown out now and then. It’s been added to the extensive lineup of inside quotes always on hand, added to other classics like, “Goodbye boys, have fun stormin’ the cyastle!” (Princess Bride), “What abou’ them? They’re freeesh.” (The Two Towers), and “It’s a donkey bazaar” (Central Asian proverb).
In light of the ever-shifting and often-dehumanizing procedures of air travel, it’s important to learn how to laugh at stuff like this. Why did that airport security man try to turn my wife into the sacrificial cupbearer of my family’s water bottles? I don’t think we’ll ever fully understand. But neither will he ever understand the legendary status he has now achieved in our family banter.
“Take a sip of da wata ma’am. Is fo yo children.”
Yes, African Doha airport water man. Your words will endure far beyond what you could have ever imagined.
Happy New Year, friends! May your 2026 be a year full of the Lord’s kindness to you.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
They ask why I’m a Christian, ‘What for you has this Christ done? Has he taken from your shoulders some heavy life burden?’ So I told them, just for once, to open hearts and open eyes Said I, ‘Read a few verses from the Gospel of the Christ Then yourselves you’ll sacrifice with both your soul and spirit And then from all deeds past embrace repentance and regret’ For Jesus Christ is living God of power without end And everything in heaven and the earth is in his hand My idol worship thrown away, and my true God I found I know he is my God, without wav’ring, question, doubt Now, I’ve comfort worry-free, and Christ, light of my days The shining strength of Jesus is my sun, my wall, my shade
This is another poem by the late Shepherd H, Central Asian believer and elderly poet-turned-Christian. This poem focuses on how Christ has become the powerful center of Shepherd’s life, its very light and sun. When asked why he’s a Christian, Shepherd points his questioners to Bible, where he claims reading even a few verses is enough to cause radical repentance and self-sacrifice.
My Sun is another poem that exults in Jesus using some very Central Asian imagery. The sun is a major symbol of our people group, something that probably has roots in ancient Zoroastrianism, but which now is mainly expressive of the hope of freedom. What I’ve translated as ‘wall’ in this poem is a garden barrier referring more to privacy, beauty, and rest than to protection from enemies. And although the sun is a beloved symbol here, so is the shade. Our dry, high desert climate means you come to really appreciate the shade and how stepping into it during the summer can provide such instant relief. So much so that I’ve heard locals rank trees according to the quality of shade that they provide.
By calling the shining strength of Jesus his sun, wall, and shade, Shepherd is proclaiming that Jesus is his light, his hope for freedom, his rest, his covering, his beauty, his relief, and his deliverance.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Praise God, one of the international churches in our region got a pastor! But there’s still another church looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
“Three men walk into a cave: An American, a Japanese man, and a Wermahi.*
The American calls out, “Hello!”
And the cave answers back, “‘elloo, ‘elloo, ‘elloo!”
The Japanese man calls out, “Konnichiwa!”
And the cave answers back, “‘ichiwaa, ‘ichiwaa, ‘ichiwaa!”
The Wermahi man calls out, “Khawneshi!”*
And the cave answers back, “Whaaaat????”
This joke was recently shared, to great effect, with a group of local men in my living room. What made it even better was that the one telling the joke was himself ethnically Wermahi*, a member of one of our minority language groups. The joke is, of course, so funny to other locals because the Wermahi language is so different and unintelligible to the other language groups around it, even though they all consider themselves members of the same regional ethnicity.
This great difference between the nearby Wermahi language and the language spoken in Poet City* and Caravan City* is simply an amusing fact of life for people here, something for members of both communities to laugh about. As it should be. God has unexpectedly brought about many good things through the original scattering of languages (and the resulting cultures) that happened at Babel. Undoubtedly, one of those good gifts is the existence of intercultural humor.
I recently reread the first book in C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, and was struck by Dr. Ransom’s observations about when the three intelligent species of the planet Malacandra got together. This kind of mixing of the species seemed especially to draw out the humor of each one. It’s as if there was something about the contrast between the different, yet equal species and their distinct kinds of humor that somehow resulted in more joy and laughter when they mixed than when each species was merely living among its own people.
This reminded me about how downright hilarious intercultural differences can be. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, pick up a copy of Daniel Nayeri’s memoir Everything Sad Is Untrue, and you’ll quickly see what I mean. Some of the funniest writers and comedians out there are third culture kids, those who have grown up in the midst of multiple cultures, and so have a particular ability to both understand and play with the differences of each. Even when the cultural differences are as slight as those between Americans and Canadians, these differences can be leveraged to hilarious effect, as when Jim Gaffigan does a standup routine about the Canadian map.
It seems that God has designed us to simply find certain kinds of differences funny. And while this can often be twisted by sin and used to laugh at others not like us, the core experience itself must be good, something that can be redeemed so that we are laughing with one another about our differences. My Wermahi friend was a good example of this, as was a Peruvian brother who preached this past week at our international church and illustrated his sermon with a story about time differences.
“I arrived at the meeting the Germans invited me to ten minutes after the start time. For my culture, I was doing great! I was early! But when I arrived, I was shocked to find out the devotional had already finished. Apparently, Germans expect you to arrive ten minutes before the meeting time so that they can start exactly on time. But my Central Asian friends? When I ask them what time I should expect them for dinner, they look at me strange! Like, ‘Why do you need to know a time?’ Because in this culture, it’s always the right time to receive a guest.”
The congregation when this brother preached was made up of attendees from about twenty-five different countries, including locals, all laughing good-naturedly at these true and genuinely funny time differences between cultures. Once again, this is as it should be.
Strange things are afoot in Western culture these days. The pendulum seems to be swinging hard away from some of the self-censoring and self-righteous political correctness and back into territory where joking about our cultural differences is not so taboo anymore, even for majority-culture White folk. I welcome the healthy parts of this, even as I know that some will take it too far, back to the kinds of jokes that communicate that differences imply inferiority. But as with food or alcohol, so with intercultural humor. “Men can go wrong with wine and women,” Luther famously said. “Shall we then prohibit and abolish women?” The potential for abuse is no reason to ban a good gift. Rather, the key is for Christians to model how that good gift can be properly enjoyed for God’s glory.
How can we be sure that our intercultural humor is healthy and helpful, an enjoyment of a good gift, rather than a sneaky dig at someone we feel we’re superior to? Well, can you tell that same joke in the presence of those from that culture and have them laughing as well? If you’re not sure, you’re probably better off not sharing it. Here, as in so many things, genuine friendship with those from other cultures makes all the difference. There are things I have learned that Central Asians find funny about themselves, such as their traditional giant parachute pants. Then there are other things they are aware of, but not yet ready to joke about, like their penchant for incessant selfie-taking. We’ve learned it’s best to follow their lead on what aspects of culture they’re ready to offer up as the butt of good jokes.
Individuals are like this, too, and as is so often the case, culture is functioning here a lot like group personality, including the same kind of foibles and inconsistencies. Why can a man laugh at a joke about his belly but get embarrassed by a joke about his hair? Why do Americans get slightly offended by a joke about how much unhealthy food we eat, but can laugh at a joke about our comparative unwillingness to learn other languages? (What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American!). These inconsistencies are a bit odd, but they are real. We do well to watch out for them.
One other warning when it comes to intercultural humor. In general, keep the jokes nice and clear. Humor is hard to translate, as a rule. But sarcasm? Not only hard to translate, but often downright unintelligible or offensive. Saying the opposite of what you mean for some kind of comedic effect is hard to pull off well in your own language and culture, let alone in someone else’s. Slapstick humor about things like fridges falling out of the sky tends to do well. Jokes dependent on wordplay or sarcasm usually end up as duds, at best. As my wife recently pointed out regarding sarcasm in texts, humor is dependent on shared context. You either need to tell translated jokes that have relatively universal content, or you need to know enough about the local context in order to play with its realities and quirkiness.
As with all humor, believers need to run it through the filter of Ephesians 4:29: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” Is the intent of that intercultural joke to build the other person up, to share something fit for the occasion, to give the hearer grace through the good gift of laughter? If so, then fire away. But still pay attention because the effect of the joke may still end up an intercultural dumpster fire even if the intent of it was good and Christian at the start.
As with the fictional alien species of Malacandra, so with the different peoples of the real world. There is something about when we mix that does and should lead to lots of good shared laughter. It seems that Babel not only gave us thousands of languages with which to eternally praise God, but also thousands of humorous differences from one another as well. And if these make great fodder for jokes now, just imagine what we’ll get to do with them in eternity.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Praise God, one of the international churches in our region got a pastor! But there’s still another church looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
This week, I witnessed a part of the local culture I had never seen before. A poetry battle.
About twelve of us were sitting around a campfire on a mountainside that overlooked the distant lights of Caravan City. It was coming toward the end of the evening. We had grilled and eaten skewered pieces of chicken, munched on sunflower seeds, and drunk our chai and Nescafé. Already, some of the men, thinking of work in the morning, were asking if it would be time to go soon.
A request by one of the men present to swap riddles and jokes had ultimately foundered upon the rocks of attempted translation from one language to another, something this particular group of guys keeps trying, even though the results are usually rather anticlimactic. Nothing like dropping what you think is a strong punchline only to be met with blank or confused looks, silence, or worse, a few polite chuckles.
I did make one successful joke in the course of the evening, when the men had started up a hearty rendition of a favorite childhood song here, which goes something like,
I’m a pig; you’re a pig; hey, all of us are pigs!
I told them to hold on and start over because I wanted to record the song for the sake of ‘the future generations.’ This caused a surprising outburst of laughter among all the men.
“For the sake of future generations! That’s a good one! Hahahaha!’
Alas, my funniest joke of the evening wasn’t even one I was really attempting to make. But when the proverbial blind squirrel finds a nut, he is proud of himself nevertheless.
Shortly after this, one man, a young journalist, told us he’d like to read us a poem he’d written.
He pulled it up on his phone as the rest of the circle of men quieted down and leaned in. Unlike much of Western culture, our Central Asian locals are still very awake to the beauty and power of poetry, especially the men. But what I was about to witness highlighted this for me in a whole new way.
Still seated, our cookout poet sat up as straight as he could in his camping chair and puffed out his chest. With one hand holding his phone out so he could read it and the other hand partially lifted in front of him, he began dropping rhythmic lines about his people’s history and long struggle for freedom. His raised hand moved up and down to emphasize the rhyming end of each line, a gesture that was followed by growing affirmations from the circle of men, a sort of ‘amening’ of each statement made.
The intensity, emotion, and volume of the poem and the affirmations grew as the poem progressed, finishing with a climactic final rhyme and chorus of applause. Even though I had only gotten half of the meaning of the poem, it was easy to feel the powerful effect of this kind of poetic oratory.
But it wasn’t over. Another man on the other side of the circle cleared his throat and shifted in his camping chair,
“Friends,” he announced, “I have an answer to that!”
What proceeded from those present was the sort of noises men in all cultures make when a challenger is announced, plus more applause.
Apparently, the first poem had not only been patriotic, but also colored with loyalty to one of the two dominant political parties/families of our region. This other man was loyal to the other party/family and was about to drop some partisan lines of his own.
His poem progressed much the way the first one had. Similar authoritative body language. Similar expressions of approval after particularly good rhythms and rhymes, and a climactic crash of louder verse and applause at the end.
The two of them went back and forth like this four or five times. Like a rap battle, the volume of the crowd’s response to each poem seemed to be the gauge of which one was winning. In the end, to me, it looked like a draw.
The atmosphere of our little campfire was now more alive than it had been all evening, and the rest of us now had the opportunity to share any favorite lines of verse that we had either written or memorized. I was thankful that one of the local believers bravely shared some lines of Christian poetry he’d recently written, since many of those present were not believers. I shared the one verse of local poetry I’ve ever memorized, one I’d once learned back in Poet City from a taxi driver.
A wish for the days of homemade naan
In a thousand homes, a pilgrim only one
Now for all, "pilgrimmy pilgrim" is claimed
But pilgrims they're not, nor their bread e'en homemade
Once again, the applause I received for this very small segment of a poem against Islamic pharasaism was very warm, and probably much more than my lackluster delivery deserved.
As we drove home, I asked one of the local believers with us about the poetry exchange we had witnessed that night. I told him that was the first time I’d seen it.
“Oh yes,” he said, “We have that in our culture, though we don’t do it as much anymore. Poetry battles. We also have proverb battles. And song battles too.”
I had once seen some YouTube videos of some local song battles, but I found it curious that, after almost a decade living in this culture, I had never seen a poetry battle like this before. I asked the other foreigner who was with us that night, and he hadn’t either. It seemed to be yet another gap in our knowledge of the local culture.
Over the last number of months, I’ve continued to chew on how most missionaries here think that preaching, monologues by leaders, and skillful, authoritative oratory are foreign, Western things. As I’ve written before, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Our local culture has great respect for and takes great pleasure in skillful public oratory of all kinds. Yet this great disconnect persists, somehow, and the majority of missionaries remain convinced that informal group discussions are the thing that is truly local and contextual, and preaching and an old-fashioned and ineffective Western form.
I mused on this as we drove down the mountain at midnight. As it turns out, locals recite even their poems as if they’re preaching. No, recite is the wrong verb. What I saw during the poetry battle was not recitation, it was proclamation. Each poet was aiming to persuade the minds and hearts of his hearers of the truth and beauty of his message. The tone and posture of these poets were that of crafted conviction. Or, as Martin Lloyd Jones once said of preaching – logic on fire.
Through local eyes, it makes the way we Westerners casually lead our Bible discussions look limp, spineless, like we don’t really believe what we’re saying. Why do we missionaries persist in presenting the word of God like we do when locals present even their private poems with so much more authority and conviction?
So much for preaching being a foreign thing. No, once again, I must conclude that, here in Central Asia, preaching is everywhere. After all, even their poets are preachers.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
[Mesopotamia] contains the site of the earliest known writing, in the lower reaches of the Euphrates valley. But in its western zone, in the coastal cities of Syria, it was also the first to make the radical simplification from hieroglyphs that denoted words and syllables to a short alphabet that represented simple sounds. The political effects of this were massive. For the first time, literacy could spread beyond the aristocratic scribal class, the people who had leisure in childhood to learn the old, complicated, system; positions of power and influence throughout the Assyrian empire were then opened to a wider social range.
The area also contains the first known museums and libraries, often centralised, multilingual institutions of the state. But by an irony of fate which has favoured the memory of this clay-based society, its documents were best preserved by firing, most simply through conflagrations in the buildings in which they were held, a circumstance that was not uncommon in its tempestuous history. These catastrophes were miracles of conservation, archiving whole libraries in situ, on occasion with even their classification intact, and have materially helped the rapid reading of much unknown history in our era.
-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34
Countless written sources from ancient history have been lost because the libraries where they were stored went up in flames. The tragic losses of the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad come to mind as a couple of such catastrophes. What might we have known that is now lost had these libraries survived to pass on their priceless knowledge?
It’s interesting, then, to realize that it’s because even older libraries burnt down that many of their records were preserved. When clay, not papyrus, vellum, or paper, was the medium of preserving written records, ancient fires actually had the effect of helping to preserve some of these records for future discovery. Twice-baked clay buried in the dry climate of the Middle East tends to last a very long time.
This is especially relevant to Christians because so many of these ancient cuneiform records have gone on to confirm the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible. Just today, I read about a newly discovered cuneiform fragment in Jerusalem. This ancient record from the late First Temple period refers to a payment the king of Jerusalem owed to the Assyrian king. This discovery aligns very well with the Old Testament’s claims that later Judean kings came under Assyrian vassalage.
There are many parts of the world where the climate does not allow for the same sort of preservation of undiscovered artifacts over thousands of years. Perhaps part of God’s plan in centering his revelation in the broader Middle East was because of these unique possibilities for conservation – even conservation via catastrophe.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
“Guests are like fish. After three days, they begin to stink.”
I’m not sure when I first heard this saying, but it sheds light on an experience that seems to take place in every society. Sometimes guests come to stay. And then end up overstaying. Every culture has these sorts of guests who stay, and stay, and stay. And every culture, at some point, develops strategies to try and get rid of them. I’ve heard that some villages in our corner of Central Asia would secretly put a little bit of salt in the shoes of overstaying guests. Allegedly, the salt would somehow trigger a desire in the visitors to depart back to where they had come from. I didn’t know about this practice back when we had a local friend unexpectedly move in with us for nine days. But had I known of it, I just may have tried it.
Jonathan* was a quirky believer who lived several hours to the south of Poet City*. He had come to faith while a university student in Poet City, and I had gotten to know him during my gap year on the field back when I was a single 20-year-old. To his great credit, Jonathan persevered in his faith when he moved back to his conservative desert city, even though there wasn’t even so much as a secret house gathering there for believers. To this day, there still isn’t. Instead, for his encouragement, Jonathan would travel up to Poet City every few months to worship with believers, to hang out with friends from his college days, and to ask around about jobs that might allow him to move. Understandably, Jonathan hoped to one day live in the more progressive Poet City and to escape the stifling heat and even more stifling Islamic culture of his hometown.
So, during our first year on the field, when Jonathan contacted me, told me he was coming to town, and asked if he could spend the night at our house, I quickly agreed. Locals in our area are traditionally expected to extend honorable hospitality at the drop of a hat. We weren’t set up super well for hosting overnight guests in our open-concept two-bedroom flat, but we could figure something out for a night or two. After all, we thought, this would be a good cultural experience for us as a new family on the field.
What I didn’t think to ask myself was why Jonathan was asking for help from us, of all people, brand new foreigners, when he had a decent network of college friends and believers that he already knew in the city. Was there some reason others were not willing to host this seemingly kind and respectable man? No, we didn’t think to ask these questions that more experienced missionaries might bring up. My wife and I simply wanted to try to do what we thought was the honorable contextual thing and host a friend who asked to stay with us.
On the first evening, I picked Jonathan up from where he was hanging out at a popular row of teahouses and brought him back to our place for supper. Our meal together went well. Jonathan was peculiar in personality, oddly swinging between being very polite and being somewhat blunt. Yet overall, he was a kind and enjoyable dinner guest.
After supper, Jonathan asked me if I could take him out to buy some peanut butter. At the time, this Western grocery item was only present in the bigger cities, and not where Jonathan lived. But apparently, Jonathan really loved him some peanut butter. So, we went peanut butter hunting and then went out to drink some tea with some of his college friends.
Jonathan had come to town during the peak of the summer heat. We only had one air conditioner that could work at night on our 10 amps of neighborhood generator electricity. This was the unit in our master bedroom. Because of this, we made the summer nights more manageable for our little family by setting up a fan to blow the cooler air from our room into the kids’ room that was directly next to ours, the air-conditioned air being pushed from room to room through the open doors that met at a corner.
That first night, we set Jonathan up in our living room as best we could, apologizing that all we could offer him for the night heat in that more private part of the house was a fan. However, since Jonathan was from a city far to the south of us that is much hotter than Poet City, we thought he should pass the night comfortably. We said goodnight and all turned in for the night. So far, so good. We went to bed feeling like decent hosts.
However, it wasn’t long before we heard some loud noises that sounded like porcelain being knocked around. My wife and I sat up in bed and looked questioningly at one another. What was that sound? I crept out of our room to find Jonathan, one leg stretched high, pant legs rolled up, washing his socks and a foot in the porcelain sink outside our little toilet and shower rooms – the same sink where we washed our hands and brushed our teeth. He was doing this so aggressively that the little sink was rocking back and forth on its porcelain stand. This, of course, was what was causing all the midnight racket.
I thought this was odd. My wife thought it was downright gross.
“Tell him he can wash his feet in the shower room!” She whispered to me urgently when I told her what was happening.
“Tomorrow. I’ll tell him tomorrow,” I assured her, still trying to make sense of the odd midnight scene I had just witnessed.
We settled back in to try to get to sleep when we were again woken up by the loud clanging of our roof door opening. It appeared that Jonathan had gone up to the flat roof to smoke a late-night cigarette. Smoking is still very common in this part of the world, even among believers, so we didn’t think too much of it. But as the hours passed, we noticed that he seemed to go up to the roof many times for many more late-night cigarettes. He also made what seemed like dozens of trips to the bathroom, which was right next to our bedroom. Eventually, sometime in the early hours of the morning, he at last settled down.
The next the morning, we asked Jonathan how he had slept.
“I slept very poorly, due to the heat.”
Huh, I thought to myself, that’sa little more blunt than I was expecting. And strange that it affected him so much, given how locals are more comfortable in the heat than we are.
“Sorry about that, brother. We heard you up in the night a lot and wondered if it might be because of the heat.”
“I was also feeling some indigestion, however, from the dinner you served me last night.”
Wow, I thought to myself again, blunt again. Even in the non-hospitality-oriented West, most guests would at least state this indirectly and let the hosts put the pieces together.
“Sorry again, our food is maybe a little different from what your stomach is used to.”
I shot a glance at my wife, who was doing her best to wrangle our toddlers and their breakfast demands while also laying out a generous spread of breakfast foods for our guest. Jonathan didn’t seem upset necessarily, just direct and a little condescending. Not unlike a teacher who felt it his duty to correct his students when they gave an incorrect answer. He was a teacher, in fact, newly hired at a private language institute in his hometown.
“Jonathan, would you like yogurt, or eggs, maybe an omelet?” My wife graciously offered.
“No thanks, just peanut butter, thank you.”
I saw my wife’s shoulders droop just a little as she realized her generous breakfast spread was all for naught.
After his quick breakfast of peanut butter and a little bit of local bread, Jonathan went outside for another smoke.
“Well… that was a little rougher than I was expecting,” I said to my wife.
“It’s okay,” my wife said. “Glad we could host him. Do you know what time he’s heading back to his city today?”
“No idea, but I’ll try to find out indirectly when I drop him off in the bazaar.”
To ask Jonathan directly, of course, would imply that we were not happy to host him as long as necessary, and would be very shameful.
So, when Jonathan and I were close to the market, I tried to get the relevant info out of him.
“So, what are your plans for today?”
“Well, I have some shopping to do in the bazaar, then I’ll be meeting up with some friends. Could you pick me up for dinner tonight?
“Um, yes… yes I can. So, will you be staying longer in Poet City?”
“Oh yes, yes, of course, I don’t want to go back home yet. I am looking for a job. Is it alright if I stay with you again tonight?”
“Of course it is!” I answered, trying my best to play the honorable and generous host. But something in my stomach told me that we might have gotten a bit more than we’d bargained for in agreeing to host Jonathan in the first place.
We went out to eat that night and paid for Jonathan’s meal. Strangely, he didn’t argue with me to pay for the bill, as would be customary when friends go out to eat together. I took note, but mostly wrote this off as some dynamic of hosting that we hadn’t learned about yet.
When we got back to our place, we offered to set Jonathan up in our kids’ room so that he could have the cold air from the one AC unit blown in via our fan setup. Our two-year-old and four-year-old would sleep on floor mattresses in our room. This would mean closer quarters all around, but our family and Jonathan would still have at least a little bit of privacy since we were in different rooms. I was also sure to point out the shower room foot washing options for Jonathan.
However, just after we had gone to bed, Jonathan soon began his same sink foot washing, rooftop smoking, and bathroom routine. After what seemed like hours of this, we finally drifted off, praying for God’s help to be gracious hosts.
At some point in the middle of the night, my wife shook me awake and pointed. There, on the floor and poking into our bedroom door, was Jonathan’s head, fast asleep and snoring. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at. Even though the kids’ room was almost as cool as ours, Jonathan must have decided that he needed to be as close as possible to the coolest air, so he moved his sleeping pallet so that he was sleeping with the bottom half of his body in the kids’ room, his upper half just outside the doorframes, and his head stuck just inside our room. He was definitely asleep, but it was a bit unnerving nonetheless to have his head, well, just there, poking into our bedroom.
The next morning, however, Jonathan seemed downright chipper. We, on the other hand, were starting to feel the toll of hosting. Still, we managed to have a pleasant (simple this time) breakfast together and to get some helpful advice from Jonathan about the local language.
Second day, same routine. My wife asked me to find out Jonathan’s plans. I tried to do so indirectly. Jonathan ended up asking to stay with us another night. He continued his peculiar nighttime habits, including sleeping with his head just inside our door. My wife and I slept fitfully and woke feeling worse than the day before.
This went on for nine nights.
Nine. Long. Nights.
My wife and I soldiered on, but soon began to feel not unlike like Gandalf after his deadly battle with the Balrog.
“Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time…”
Eventually, even Jonathan began to pick up on the fact that we were struggling to remain energetic and joyful hosts.
On day eight, at breakfast, he went into teacher mode again.
“You know, in my culture, it’s very important that you reassure a guest over and over that they are not causing any trouble to you. Otherwise, they may begin to feel insecure about the warmth of their welcome.”
My wife, fearing her emotions might be displayed a little too obviously on her face, made a quick about-turn for the kitchen.
I took a deep breath and tried to answer in some way that was still kind, but which perhaps hinted at the fact that Jonathan’s welcome was indeed no longer as warm as it once was.
“Yes… um… thank you for the advice. That’s good to know… Will you be needing a ride to the bazaar today?”
By this point, we were getting desperate. We needed to find an honorable way out of this situation – and fast. Our little family was at the end of our rope. Our kids were exhausted from sleeping on the floor of our room. My wife and I were exhausted from having them in our room every night – not to mention the nightly presence of Jonathan’s head. We were burning through our meager finances with all of the extra food costs we were incurring. And Jonathan continued to not offer to help with any of these costs, despite regularly asking to eat out together.
Our guest also showed no indication that he was planning on going back home anytime soon. He kept saying that he was hoping to find a job, but he was not doing any actual job searching. It slowly became clear that he was, in fact, waiting for me to find him a job and a place to rent. Until that happened, it seemed his plan was to just extend his stay with us.
Clearly, whatever Jonathan’s assumptions were about this whole arrangement, they were wildly different from ours. We just thought we were hosting a believer for a couple of nights. But somehow, we had unwittingly become some kind of patrons now responsible for finding work and housing for our peculiar house guest. We were all for helping a brother out in reasonable ways, but we were in no position to find him long-term work and housing.
Jonathan didn’t seem to be picking up on the many ways we were trying to indirectly and honorably communicate that even though we were hypothetically ready to host him as long as needed, we were not actually able to host him any longer. Even when our indirect communication started becoming more and more direct, he still wasn’t getting it. No, we realized, we’d need to find some way to kick our guest out and still save some face for all parties involved.
The answer came through a teammate. They were shocked to learn that a local had actually stayed with us for over a week. This was not normal, even for locals hosting other locals. Something was off. This teammate suggested that our family take a trip out of town, and thereby force our guest to figure out different lodging. Thankfully, we did have a trip we had been needing to take to a different city for some government business. By bumping it up a little, we had found a way out. In our local culture, having guests is the kind of thing you can use to get out of almost anything. But if you need to get out of having guests, apparently, having a trip is the magic escape key.
Jonathan did not take the news of our departure very well, seeming at last to understand that we really weren’t holding out on him and we really couldn’t help him in the way he had hoped. He told me that he didn’t have enough money to afford more than a couple of nights at a cheap bazaar hotel and that none of his friends were willing to host him. So, we helped him pay for a night or two at a little hole-in-the-wall hotel.
As I dropped him off late at night, I felt bad for Jonathan. He seemed pretty down. Things were still respectful between us overall, which I was thankful for. Jonathan still vacillated in his speech between a strange bluntness and an odd propriety. But he did, in the end, say the things he was supposed to say as a guest. We also did our best to tell him how honored we were to host him – even if we were by that point on the verge of tears of utter exhaustion.
That night, in the absence of feet in the sink, 3 am smoke breaks, and snoring heads poking in the door, my family slept like the dead.
Looking back, I’m still not exactly sure what to make of Jonathan’s stay with us that summer. Perhaps he was simply wired to miss the normal social cues governing most local hospitality? Perhaps we were sending the wrong signals? It was hard to say, but the fact that he couldn’t find any local friends to host him was an indicator that it wasn’t just us. It seems that Jonathan had overstayed his welcome with others before as well. That meant that he was either of the type who had learned to abuse the local culture of hospitality, or that perhaps something else was going on that meant that, even though he was a local, he didn’t really know (or sense) the rules.
Believe it or not, we did have Jonathan stay with us a couple more times after all of this. But I had learned my lesson and was clear to tell him a certain number of nights we could host, one or two, and to set expectations accordingly. This sort of approach seemed to go much better.
And I think we would still host him if he ever came to Caravan City, albeit with some fear and trepidation. And boundaries. Very clear boundaries.
In all this, we learned that in a culture that extends lavish offers of (often unsustainable) hospitality, there will always be people who, wittingly or unwittingly, take advantage of this. Finding kind and honorable ways out of this is therefore a top priority for all who attempt to extend these offers that most take hypothetically. Because some will take you literally.
When that happens, you just might have to put some salt in their shoes. Or, in case that doesn’t work (and it probably won’t), you can always do as we did – and make an honorable run for it.
*Names changed for security
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
I once stumbled upon a commentary on the book of Revelation that provided a helpful framework regarding the three foes of the Church in all ages*. This was some years ago now, and, regrettably, I no longer have the details of the commentary in order to source it fully here. But here is the gist of the author’s argument.
In the visions of Revelation 12-19, Satan is shown attacking the people of Christ by means of three main enemies. The first enemy is a beast that emerges from the sea, which seems to symbolize physical persecution. The second enemy is a second beast, a false prophet, representing spiritual deception. The third is the great prostitute of Babylon, who represents worldly seduction. The Church faithfully resists these enemies and their attacks, and ultimately, each enemy is destroyed forever.
This framework came up again this week as we met with a friend whose work focuses on aiding and advising persecuted believers in our region. We were discussing the very common objection we tend to receive when seeking to counsel local believers in these situations.
“You don’t understand. You have a Western passport and can flee whenever you need to, back to a country where you are safe and not under attack for your faith like we are here.”
How is a Western missionary supposed to respond to an objection like this? At first glance, it seems true. I can use my blue passport to easily flee if I experience death threats. Most of my local friends do not have this option.
One good response is to point out that Jesus’ commands for faithfully facing persecution (such as the incredibly helpful Matthew chapter 10) are true regardless of circumstantial differences between believers. It’s not from my personal authority that I encourage my local friend to be faithful unto death, if necessary, and to never deny Jesus. These are the eternal commands of God himself. And even if I never face the same kind of threats, I still have the spiritual authority to humbly call my believing friends who do to obey God’s word.
To shirk back from this is to fall into the same kind of trap as men who feel they can’t speak against abortion because they aren’t female. Don’t fall for it.
But along with this, we should also not be afraid to point out that there is no church that is not under some form of attack. In all ages, in all cultures, in all locales, the dragon is attacking the bride of Christ. He is coming after her by means of the violent beast, the deceptive prophet, or the seductive prostitute. His chosen combinations of these enemies will tend to vary. But take any faithful church anywhere in the world and apply this framework, and you will see it waging spiritual warfare against either persecution, or false teaching, or worldliness, or all three at once.
I remember once visiting a believing couple who had fled Afghanistan and been resettled in the US. During our visit, we watched a short video made to mobilize prayer among Western churches for the persecuted Afghan church. This short video said something like, “Satan’s power is very strong in Afghanistan.”
I’ll never forget how the Afghan brother with me that evening responded. He scoffed.
“That’s not right,” he said, “Satan is much stronger here in America than in Afghanistan.”
This brother responded this way because he was reeling from having transferred from a context where the beast was the primary enemy to one where the great prostitute was the greatest threat. He had learned how to faithfully stay and faithfully flee violent persecution, but he had not yet learned how to live under the drip-drip-drip daily attacks of worldly seduction. It seemed far easier to him to defend against the one attack than the other.
In reality, each of the church’s three perennial enemies is equally deadly. The church militant may experience seasons of sweet relief from one or two of these enemies, but she must always be on guard. It’s often the case that even as one seems to have retreated that the others are quietly growing strong and beginning their nighttime raids.
Friends, we are not calling believers under persecution to do anything unique or different. They must defend the church against the enemies of Christ, just as all Christians everywhere must do. They must faithfully endure to the end, just as we must. Their churches must defend against the beast, the false prophet, and the great prostitute, just as our churches back home must also do.
To become a Christian is to join the front lines of spiritual warfare and to be handed spiritual weapons and armor.
“Welcome, brother, we’re so glad you’re here. Now plug that gap.”
Do our local friends feel like they are fighting spiritual warfare, and we are not? This may have to do with what we are modeling. Perhaps we have ourselves grown lazy and tired on the battlefield and are acting more like the wealthy Roman nobles feasting in Pompey’s camp at Pharsalus than the focused and battle-hardened centurions in Caesar’s that would soon overrun them.
But it may also have to do with how we are framing things. Perhaps we have forgotten that, until Christ returns, this is the age of the church militant, when the task of every believer and every church is to “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Eph 6:11). This is just as true of the old churches in the West as it is of the baby churches on the frontiers of Central Asia.
The three perpetual enemies of the church will continue their attacks until Christ returns. But they are fighting a losing battle, a long defeat. Every day, Christ and his Church are gaining ground. And in the end, the beast, the false prophet, and the great prostitute will be utterly destroyed, and we will enter into the sweet rest of victory.
Until then, we fight. All of us.
*Not to the exclusion of the classic formulation of Satan, sin, and death as the three main enemies of the church, but a different and complementary way to frame it
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Long ago, when I first started this blog, I posted the following quote from GK Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:
Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
Last year, singer-songwriter Dave Whitkroft reached out to me to let me know that he had written a song inspired by this same quote. When I looked it up, I was intrigued by the premise of the song, which asks if God ever, like us, tires of the weekly repetition of normal local church worship gatherings. This was not a question I’d ever considered before.
I’ve really enjoyed listening to this song in recent months and being reminded of God’s childlike “Do it again” delight, his ability to exult in the monotony of our simple weekly worship. The lyrics of the song artfully contrast our struggles to desire attending church, given things like “that family in the middle row” that’s “had it in for me for years,” (ha!) with God, who doesn’t grow old or weary and who continually shouts “Encore!” for even the most average service proclaiming his truth.
Whatever aspect of weekly church rhythms it might be that tempts us to occasionally skip out, may this song encourage us, like the singer, to grab our keys and go gather with God’s people anyway. After all, our Father is strong enough and ‘young’ enough to delight in every single church service, just as he delights in every single sunrise.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Early on in my 11th-grade year, an older TCK in his twenties, an alumnus of our school, came back to visit. In the years since he had graduated and left Melanesia, he had joined the US military and become a member of Marine Recon. These are specialized Marines who carry out reconnaissance and combat missions similar to those of the US special forces.
During his visit to our missionary base, he met with me and several others who were getting close to graduating, telling us stories from his different missions and sharing how growing up as a missionary kid had been such an advantage for him in his overseas deployments. He told us how he had specifically thrived in the missions where they had been tasked to work alongside militia units from other countries like Yemen and Afghanistan, as well as how hungry many of his fellow soldiers were for spiritual truth. Because of this, he advised us to seriously consider whether or not God might want us to try to join elite units such as the Army Rangers, where we could maximize our cross-cultural skills, serve our country, and, after proving ourselves good soldiers, powerfully share the gospel with our brothers in arms.
One of the high school seniors and I, in particular, were seriously drawn to this idea. After this older TCK left, we continued to discuss it and to pray about it for several months. While the enthusiasm of this other student eventually cooled, I began to feel a deep conviction that this was exactly what the Lord wanted me to do. I had a natural love for adventure and a desire to overcome difficult challenges. I thrived in cross-cultural settings. I wanted to be in some kind of setting where I could be an evangelist. And my dad had been a Marine. In fact, this is where he had come to faith. The discipline, camaraderie, and mission focus he had learned in the military had deeply shaped his Christian faith and ministry. Looking back, I’m sure a large part of my motivation was also that I simply wanted to be like my dad, who had passed away when I was still very young.
But there was one problem. I had, and still have, exercise-induced asthma. The older TCK veteran had told me that this can sometimes be a disqualifying problem, but that he also knew soldiers who carried inhalers with them. So that I could be sure of the official line, I reached out to a recruiter via email. To my relief, the recruiter reassured me that my asthma would not be an issue at all.
This, I would later find out, was a lie. I didn’t yet know that US military recruiters have a reputation for saying all kinds of things in order to meet their quotas of new recruits, even things that are completely untrue (a friend who later joined the Navy also found out after he was in that a bunch of the promises he had been made were completely bogus). Not knowing this, however, I settled in my conviction that this was the path I was supposed to pursue, instead of going to university or Bible college like almost all of my classmates would. One practical upside of this, I claimed, was that I’d be able to use the GI Bill to pay for my college degree afterward.
The next year was spent going on long runs through the surrounding banana and coffee gardens, doing pyramid-style workouts, reading up on CS Lewis’ support for Christians joining the military, and arguing with many of my classmates, and even some of the adult missionaries, who disagreed with this vision for my future.
“My last job before I left the army was driving around the countryside in a jeep picking up kids like you who broke their legs after jumping out of planes in Airborne training,” one missionary uncle said, pointedly.
Even some of my closest TCK friends were deeply opposed to me pursuing this path. As was my older brother, who was a college student back in the US. He had serious questions about the morality of the US conflicts at the time that I would be called to participate in. But I was unshaken. God, whom I believed was leading me, was sovereign. And CS Lewis, after all, was on my side (although Jim Eliot was not), as were my Melanesian friends. I also had a sense that this path powerfully combined many aspects of my story and how God had wired me.
This being the case, I pursued this plan single-mindedly until it was the final semester of my senior year, and all the deadlines for college scholarships had passed. It was at this point that, for some reason, I emailed a different recruiter. This man was the one who told me the truth. Asthma was absolutely a deal breaker. No one who openly admitted to having asthma, even mild asthma, would be accepted into the US military. I had two options, he said. I could lie about it on my application. Or, I recall him writing, “If you still really want to serve your country, you can always join the State Department.”
The State Department? I had no interest whatsoever in joining that boring-sounding entity, whatever it was. And I definitely wasn’t going to lie. How could I claim to be going into the military to be a faithful Christian witness, yet willingly sin to get into the military in the first place? No, I had been utterly misled, and the path I had been wholeheartedly pursuing for over a year had suddenly come to a dead end. Perhaps I had been naive and full of youthful idealism. Perhaps I should have figured out the lie sooner. Whatever the case, I felt a growing numbness in my head and a sinking in my stomach as all my plans suddenly went up in a plume of smoke and darkness. I had been so sure. And now? I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do.
For the next several days, I walked around in a fog of disappointment and disorientation. My friends and teachers were kind about it, but many also, understandably, seemed relieved. One of the hardest parts of it all was wrestling with what had seemed so clearly to be God’s leading. If it had been God, why had the door he seemingly pointed to been abruptly slammed in my face? Had I completely misread what I’d thought had been God’s will? What if it had been simply my desires masquerading as God’s leading the whole time? Had God tricked me?
One afternoon, I sat at our dining room table, sifting through a pile of the promotional college material I had received. It was all too expensive, and all too late. I threw one glossy brochure after another into a pile, when I suddenly came across a simple paper flyer I had completely forgotten about. It described a new freshman year program being started at Bethlehem Baptist, John Piper’s church. It was called INSIGHT, which stood for “Intensive Study of Integrated Global History and Theology.” Basically, it was a Christian worldview program that would emphasize history, theology, and missions.
As I sat there looking at this piece of paper, I recalled when my Government class teacher had passed out these flyers. I had turned to my close friend, Calvin, with whom I would exchange CDs of Piper sermons, and said, “If I weren’t going into the military, this is exactly the kind of thing I might like to join.”
That moment and that conversation had been filed away in my brain for eventual deletion. But it came back to me as I wondered if Bethlehem might still be receiving applications. We inquired, and sure enough, they were still taking students for their inaugural year. It was remarkably affordable, always a plus for a missionary family like ours. It was connected to a ministry I was beginning to be deeply shaped by. And while Minneapolis might not be quite as exciting as jumping out of airplanes, I did find a year of intensive reading and discussion about history, theology, and missions to be an exciting prospect of another sort.
It wasn’t long before I was Minneapolis-bound, still reeling a bit from all my plans having gone up in smoke, but genuinely excited about what my freshman year would have in store. Little did I know that year in Minneapolis would be one of the most formative of my life. There, my long combat with the doctrines of grace would finally be settled. It was there that I would make my first Muslim friends and receive a calling to work among unreached Muslims. And it was in Minneapolis where I first heard about a particular corner of Central Asia, and how they needed young people to go spend six months to a year there, doing development work, making friends, and telling people about Jesus.
Truth be told, I still wondered sometimes about that military road not taken, and what would have happened had I been able to join the Army Rangers after all.
One day, early on in Poet City, I had the chance to talk to some members of the US military who were deployed in the region. Somehow, we found out that a couple of them were believers, and they found out that we were not just relief workers, but missionaries. I’ll never forget when one of them told me how badly he wished he could be in my place – free to mingle, to make friends, and to share the gospel. It struck me because there was still a large part of my heart that wished I could be in his place.
The Lord knew exactly the roles that soldier and I needed to be in. And my role, apparently, was not to share the gospel while jumping out of airplanes. Rather, it was to live in one of those very same regions where I might have served as a soldier, but sharing the gospel with a chai cup, rather than a rifle, in my hand, jumping in and out of cigarette smoke-filled taxis rather than C-130s.
As the proverb says, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.” To this day, I still maintain that my initial plans had been good. But clearly, God’s plans had been better.
Friends, if all your good plans have similarly gone up in smoke, take heart. It really is a blow when this happens. But in it, God is painfully revealing to you his better plans. One day, you will wake up to suddenly find your steps mysteriously and wonderfully established – and then you’ll marvel at the goodness of God in blowing it all up.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Sometimes the missionary community is very concerned about something that, in the end, is simply not that big of a deal. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the foreigners-to-locals ratio in church plants and ministry groups on the mission field is one of these things being given undue weight.
The logic of this concern initially makes a lot of sense. The idea is that if locals are outnumbered by foreigners, then locals will sense that this gathering does not really belong to them, and they will not take the ownership needed for true long-term indigeneity. If too many foreigners are there, the thinking goes, it will somehow contaminate or undermine even the spiritual power of a particular gathering.
Hence, missionaries (at least in our corner of Central Asia) bring up this ratio quite often when discussing whether or not they or others should be a part of a particular church service or Bible study. Just this week, I had a friend tell me he’d like to come to an evangelistic discussion we’ve started hosting at our home, but only if there weren’t already too many foreigners.
But here’s the issue with this assumption about ratios. Too many foreigners only seems to be a problem if those foreigners present keep on using English and letting Western culture dictate the rules of the gathering. Yes, of course, if that is happening, then many locals will intuit that this gathering is a foreign thing, and it will likely only serve the minority of locals who already want to put on Western culture and use English. This may be a fine start for an international, English-speaking church. But this sort of gathering will, in all likelihood, fail to be very effective with the majority of locals and fail to ever transition to a truly indigenous group.
But what happens when the foreigners in a gathering like this are committed to using the local language and following the local culture as much as possible? And if they constantly vision cast for a day when that church or gathering will be majority-local and local-led? In that case, a large ratio of foreigners doesn’t seem to negatively affect a long-term trajectory toward indigeneity. In fact, it may even be a help toward this end.
Our church plant in Poet City had a foreign majority at most of its gatherings for the first five years or so of its existence. This was true even though, from the very beginning, we were all committed to learning the local language and culture and seeking to model faithfulness to Jesus within these local expressions. For years, we were somewhat disheartened and concerned about the fact that so many church meetings had more Americans in the room than Central Asians.
What we didn’t realize was that we were simply providing the needed core around which local believers would eventually be able to stabilize and mature. Then, a couple of years ago, some kind of threshold was passed, perhaps related to a large enough contingent of mature local members and our first local elder. Now, the locals in every service easily outnumber the foreigners by a large majority.
Because of the serious spiritual instability of our locals who come to faith out of a Muslim background, as well as their deep need to see faithfulness concretely modeled over the long term, I might even go as far as to say it was an advantage to have our previous church plant be majority-foreigner for so long. This seemingly less-likely path toward indigeneity has, in the end, gotten closer to its goal than other attempts that tried to protect indigeneity by not allowing other foreigners to take part.
Many missionaries would have looked at that church five or six years ago and doubted that it was really on its way toward becoming an indigenous church. There were simply too many foreigners present. But visit one of their services today, and it becomes clear that this body has matured to the point where it will keep faithfully humming along, even if no foreigners are present anymore. In fact, this summer, that very thing took place.
Is this merely anecdotal evidence? Well, I find it curious that instead of focusing on ethnic ratios, the Bible seems more concerned about the use of a common language (and translation when needed) when it comes to church plant order and health (1 Cor 14). Nowhere are we commanded to make sure that Jews remain a small minority, for example, in the churches in Gentile regions, or vice versa. Instead, believers are pointed to Paul’s example of becoming all things to all men (1 Cor 9:19-23), instructed to love one another in similar ways (1 Cor 13), and told to make sure everyone in the service can understand what is going on (1 Cor 14). Our assumption that the ethnic optics of the room are what really matter seems to be out of touch with the New Testament here. We should ask ourselves where these beliefs about the visuals are coming from.
Who cares if the room looks majority White Westerner for a while? Are locals being edified in their mother tongue? Are they coming to faith and growing in spiritual maturity? Are the foreigners seeking to model and mentor how to navigate the local culture as Christians, and pursuing genuine spiritual friendships with the local believers? These are the kinds of factors that make the difference, not policing some kind of optics ratio.
Is there wisdom in gauging whether a majority of foreign Christians is undermining future indigeneity? Yes, of course. But I would contend that the real issue is not the mere presence of foreigners, but rather what kind of posture those missionaries are taking. Our locals say, “You can’t block out the sun with a sieve.” Faithful spiritual work will, in time, bear good fruit, even if that work is done by those who are visually different from the locals. The superficial optics of a room where there are more foreigners than locals might feel quite significant, but in the end, it’s more like a thin sieve. The light will get through.
Friends, let’s stop worrying so much about the percentage of foreigners in local church plants and ministries on the mission field. This is a concern that is given far too much weight in our missionary conversations about strategy and tactics. Instead, let’s focus on all foreigners involved serving the locals by putting on the local language and culture. Let’s strive to model biblical faithfulness, authority, and friendship, and see, in the end, what might grow from this.
It may look odd, or even awkward, for a while. “Why are we all operating in the local language and culture when only two locals came today?” However, let’s not forget that all of us mature adults were once awkward and gangly teenagers. We know that looking or feeling odd for a season is no indicator that maturity isn’t coming.
In fact, it’s a sign that maturity is on its way.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization.
Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. Our kids’ TCK school is also in need of a math and a science teacher for middle school and high school. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.
Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
