Tag: Missions

Western Missionary, Know Your Handicaps

When it comes to today’s Western missionaries, we are very aware of the handicaps of our forbears. That is, we know all too well what the weaknesses and blind spots were for Western missionaries in past eras. They often conflated Western culture with Christianity, they built massive missionary compounds, they held onto church power too long, they didn’t contextualize, etc. You can go and read Roland Allen if you want a deep dive into the problems of the Western missions movement in the early 1900s. The problem is that we’re often unaware of our current handicaps, how contemporary Western missionaries bring their own unique weaknesses and blind spots to the field, and then proceed to do missions work that is, well, handicapped by these postures.

The following is a list of handicaps that, in our experience, most Western missionaries bring with them to the mission field. Yes, there are exceptions to these trends out there. Yes, most of these weaknesses also correspond to a particular strength of Western culture. And yes, this list is in some places shaped by our particular context in Central Asia. But I think many of these handicaps continue to show up globally as Westerners are sent out to fulfill the Great Commission. It’s because I care so deeply about that holy calling that I want other Western missionaries to have a greater self-awareness of these handicaps – and to pivot accordingly. If we remain unaware of these forces acting upon us from our own cultural background, these default postures, as it were, we will be unable to effect the kind of change we so hope for.

This is a longer post, so buckle up. Or, if helpful, you can scan the headings below and read the points that stick out to you.

We come to the field and leave as radical individualists. A typical prospective missionary will announce to his pastors that he has been called to the mission field and then expect their blessing. Then, when leaving the field, he will likewise announce to his colleagues and the local believers that God has called him elsewhere. Often, these decisions are made in private, with the hard-to-refute claim that God has spoken, and without the counsel of the broader believing community. Instead, we should be carefully involving faithful pastors and our church community in these momentous and costly decisions.

We treat locals as projects rather than genuine friends. Westerners are very goal and task-oriented. Often, this means we treat locals on the mission field more like projects than as actual spiritual peers and friends. They can’t help but sense this, and, long-term, it impedes our work’s effectiveness. We need to embrace a posture of spiritual equality and genuine friendship with locals. Yes, we are called to make disciples, but those disciples should also be becoming some of our very best friends.

We trust in our expertise instead of in the power of the Word and the Spirit. We Westerners are good at planning, preparing, studying, and strategizing. The problem is we often put our trust in these efforts, rather than pursuing them with our trust rooted in the power of God’s Word and God’s Spirit. This might seem like a subtle thing, but it makes all the difference. At the end of the day, do we work hard and trust in our expertise or trust in God’s power? The secret is that trusting in God’s power often means we’ll work even harder.

We are terrified of contaminating the local believers with our Western culture. We are desperate to not repeat the mistakes of the old colonial missionaries, which means deep down we are very afraid that we will ruin the indigenization or local ownership of our work with our own cultural imports or upfront presence. This fear is so strong that it will often keep Western missionaries from obeying clear biblical commands, such as the commands to do ministry by example, to teach, preach, baptize, and form churches. The better posture is to recognize that some cultural mixing is inevitable, so we should simply be aware and proactive in it, putting it always under the microscope of what is loving and faithful to scripture.

We prioritize culture over the Bible. Again, because we are so afraid of changing local culture, we will often shrink back when local culture clashes with the Bible. This is especially tempting in areas of costly obedience, such as church discipline, bold witness, churches that mix members of enemy people groups, etc. But every culture is fallen. And that means that when any aspect of culture goes against the Bible, we go with the Bible, come what may. This is vitally important for modeling for local believers how they can transform their own culture over the long haul.

We prioritize the shallow areas of culture while remaining ignorant of the deeper areas of culture. The ironic thing is that, for how much we Westerners talk about the importance of contextualization, we’re not very good at it. Instead, many missionaries fixate on the external, shallow aspects of culture while failing to recognize the deeper aspects of the culture where contextualization is truly needed. In our context, way too many missionaries are worried about locals sitting in chairs rather than on the floor when they should be worried about what to do about things like the deep patron-client and honor-shame commitments and assumptions that our locals have. While still prioritizing the Bible over culture, we Westerners also need to push much deeper into understanding local cultures and worldviews, and learning the local language well.

We dismiss certain practices or methodologies simply because they feel old-fashioned, traditional, or foreign. Good contextualization has nothing to do with how a certain form feels to us and whether it reminds us or not of uncomfortable things from our history or upbringing. Good contextualization is about making biblical principles and practices clear and compelling in a local language and culture. We Westerners have our own cultural and religious baggage, but we need to do our best to put that aside so that we don’t dismiss certain forms out of hand when they are both biblically permissible and locally effective. I may not like pews or cross necklaces. But that has everything to do with my background, and is, in fact, irrelevant when it comes to good local contextualization.

We don’t understand how forms carry meaning. Not every word, cultural ritual, or religious practice can be redeemed. First, the Bible outright prohibits certain forms, such as idols. In addition, some forms in a local culture simply carry too much anti-biblical meaning, such that locals will not be able to embrace a new meaning given to them, no matter how compelling a case we foreigners make. Other forms can be contested, and perhaps redeemed over time. Some are ripe for redemption. In our context, the term Muslim cannot be redeemed, even though its original meaning in Arabic is simply one who submits to God. However, the old Central Asian New Year holiday (Nawroz) is currently being contested by local believers and filled with Christian meaning. And the local word for the all-powerful creator God has already been redeemed and redefined biblically by the local believers.

We are drawn to silver bullet methodologies rather than the slow and steady path of healthy growth. Western culture programs us to be drawn to the new, the big, and the fast. This means that Western missionaries are vulnerable to methodologies that promise unprecedented results in record time. I believe much of the popularity of insider movement and movement methodologies like DMM is playing into this handicap of Western culture. But similar to how monetary investments grow, the healthiest long-term growth is in the slow, steady investment that brings in exponential returns after decades, not in a matter of a few short months or years. By way of analogy, we should want our work to be like forests of oak that cover the mountainsides, not grass on the rooftops. This is the kind of healthy work that we see in the New Testament, as well as in church history, punctuated though it is with occasional periods of miraculous growth.

We are dogmatic about our methodology and casual about our dogma. Human beings will be dogmatic about something. It’s inescapable. Western missionaries, reacting to the past again, tend to hold their dogma with a loose hand, while holding their methodologies with a dogmatic fervor. This belies a common mistake where we confuse principles with strategy, and go on to treat locally-specific strategy and tactics (methodology) as fixed and universally applicable, while forgetting about universally applicable principles undergirding the methodologies. A wiser way forward is to hold our methodologies with a looser hand, while holding to our Biblical principles and dogma with more conviction. The art of theological triage is especially helpful here.

We are anti-institutional. Popular Western culture is jaded when it comes to institutions and is experiencing an era of post-institutional ferment. That means Western missionaries are not naturally drawn to things like organizing, building, and institutionalizing. In fact, many methodologies tell us that it’s these specific things that will kill movements of the Spirit. We need to realize that much of the pull of organic, casual, low-hierarchy, house church-style Christianity for us is because of our own cultural moment, and not necessarily because it is effective locally or even biblical. Yes, house church is a good biblical option, but the way many Western missionaries go about it often leads to contextual ineffectiveness and spiritual compromise.

We have problems with authority. Many Westerners have been raised with this as one of our primary maxims: “Question Authority.” As a culture, we have lots of baggage with the concept of authority, and, because of this, we tend to not think very clearly about it. But one thing we do know about authority, we distrust it. However, whether we like it or not, we live in a world where authority exists. God created the universe to be a hierarchical one; healthy societies are those that honor just and proper authority, and even in the most natural of friendships, someone will always take the lead. Authority itself is fundamentally good, not bad, even though it is fallen. But Western culture tends to reverse this, or to pretend that authority isn’t really needed. Not only has this infiltrated much of our thinking about society, and men’s and women’s roles in the home and the church, but it’s also seeped into our missiology and our bearing on the mission field. Practically, this is a major factor in why we are drawn to certain methodologies and why we fumble so badly in societies that view authority more positively.

We cannot easily define a biblical church. Many Western missionaries on the field practice a missiology of reaction. We don’t know exactly what kind of churches we are trying to plant, but we know that we don’t want them to be like the churches back home. Often, this is a sign that we haven’t had the chance to truly develop a biblical ecclesiology. We also come from a culture that has, because of its radical individualism, lost most of its good instincts when it comes to church. Because of this, we can’t easily define what a biblical church is. In truth, every missionary should be able to easily describe a healthy biblical church, even in their sleep. Somehow, something so central to the work of missions has become one of the most common handicaps of Western workers on the field. We desperately need to learn frameworks that summarize the Bible’s teaching on this subject, such as 9 Marks or 12 characteristics of a healthy church.

We make the mission field a laboratory for our church fantasies. Because most of us don’t have a biblical ecclesiology, we can fall into making the mission field a laboratory for our personal fantasies about church. If we’ve had bad experiences with authority, we might try to plant churches that have no official leaders or teachers. If we feel like church membership or preaching are really Western accretions, then we might try to plant churches without them. If we have ideas about what authentic, pure, New Testament Christianity was really like, we can turn local believers into our guinea pigs. No, churches on the mission field shouldn’t look exactly like the churches back home do, but they are not our personal laboratories. The underlying elements should be the same, even if they are clothed in a different language and culture.

We think we are above the local church on the mission field. Many Western missionaries do not become accountable members of churches on the mission field. Instead, we prefer to keep our membership in our sending churches, even after faithful churches are planted in their context. This is often because joining a local or international church feels like it will be such a time commitment, and missionaries know their time is precious. The problem is that, because of this, many of us missionaries inevitably move out beyond any real spiritual accountability, which, long-term, must be local accountability. Zoom calls and a visit every few years will not cut it. We might live like this for decades, assuming that we are a special category of Christian who exists for the local church but not under the local church. But such spiritual free agents fail to model for local believers what faithful membership looks like, as well as dangerously expose themselves to great spiritual risk.

We use truisms to avoid exercising our legitimate spiritual authority. “I don’t want to build my own kingdom.” “I want to stay out of the way.” “Let’s trust the Holy Spirit.” “Locals are really the ones who need to take charge, after all.” We Western missionaries will commonly use phrases like these to excuse ourselves from taking spiritual leadership in missions contexts. The thing about all of these statements is that they seem so humble. But often they serve to cloak the fact that, because of our post-colonial angst, or our methodological commitments, or our simple insecurity, we don’t want to exercise the legitimate spiritual authority that we have as ambassadors of Christ. These statements often cloak a false humility and keep us from modeling spiritual leadership for local believers, leaving them to depend on the fallen leadership models they have from their own cultural background. We Westerners need to understand that our current issue is not that we love leading or being upfront. It’s that we are terrified of it.

We hold up our personal church size preference as the ideal. Everyone has a personal church size preference, whether we recognize it or not. And each church size has its own size culture that comes with its own positives and negatives. The problem is that we missionaries often latch on to our favorite size church and start thinking that this size is the biblically faithful way to do church. I once fell into this kind of thinking, back when I was a house-church-only advocate. As with methodology, so with church sizes. The underlying characteristics of a healthy church are universal and scalable. They can be implemented in a Philippian house or in a Jerusalem congregation of 3,000.

We have arbitrary definitions of reproducibility. Reproducibility is all the rage in popular Western missiology. And for what it’s worth, reproducibility is a biblical concept. But Westerners often throw this term around without defining it and without recognizing that their own understanding of what is reproducible is very arbitrary. 2 Timothy 2:2 speaks of four generations of believers, but it does not give us a timeline in which this multiplication is supposed to take place. We like to stick our own preferred timelines onto the text, but that not only leaves us importing our own ideas into the Bible, but also poorly prepares us to discern what sort of timelines are truly needed in our local context. Again, what are we going for? Oak forests or grass on the rooftops? And should that affect how we think about reproducibility?

We rely on salaried positions for raising up leaders rather than waiting for the slow and steady work of character growth. The quickest way to see ministry results and see leaders emerge in Central Asia is to hand out salaried positions. Unfortunately, most of these results will prove to be short-lived. The hard truth is that believers are not ready to handle salaried leadership positions in any culture until they have a proven track record of leading regardless of the money. But we Westerners are so eager to show results in our work that we are often tempted to skip the long, slow path of character development by means of salaried positions. This is made all the easier by the fact that the Western church has such a culture of generosity, where funds for this kind of thing are so easily come by.

We are hyper-focused on our people group to the exclusion of others God brings into our circle. Many Western missionaries have intentionally set their sights on an unreached people group. This is admirable, for without this kind of specific focus, many of these populations will continue to be without gospel access. The question is whether or not this kind of focus should be an inclusive or an exclusive one. Many of us will neglect to care for other believers or seekers around us, even if God puts them right in our path, because they are not from our people group. God forbid, they might even be other foreigners who require some of our time. Instead of this, we would be wise to maintain a determined focus on our main people group, while also trusting that if God brings us believers from other groups, he has a good reason for that. This past year, we befriended a believing family from Zimbabwe who had moved to Caravan City for a job opportunity. One year on, they had to unexpectedly move to Poet City, where they are now attending our previous church plant and encouraging our dear friends there. We had no idea when we invested time in them that they would later go on to invest in local friends like Darius and his church. We should not let a specific people group focus prevent us from caring for the broader body of Christ as well.

We are afraid to own the strengths of Western culture. Even though this is a post largely about the current weaknesses of Western culture, I would be remiss to not mention that one of those weaknesses is refusing to admit the strengths of Western culture. Western culture, like all cultures, truly if imperfectly reflects the image of God. It has also been deeply shaped by the Bible and by Christianity. This means Western culture has both real natural strengths and real Christian strengths. We missionaries from the West need to realize that we can be honest and thankful for these strengths without getting anywhere near sinful ethnocentrism or racism. I love how Western culture is so full of hopeful optimism, how it emphasizes hard work and honesty, how it dignifies the individual, and how it advocates for freedom of religion. I hope that Central Asian culture becomes more Western in these ways, without losing its distinctive strengths. We Western missionaries don’t serve our local friends by pretending our culture is all bad. Rather, we should model for them a humble and honest posture towards our native cultures.

We over-prioritize physical safety. Westerners are safer than ever, yet we continue to be more and more fixated on physical safety. This means we are often the first to bolt in case of security crises and the first to recommend our local friends flee in the face of serious persecution. There is often wisdom in fleeing danger, but we Western missionaries need to be aware of what we are modeling for local believers. Are we teaching them how to be afraid, or how to trust God in the face of danger? These are difficult calls and require much wisdom. But part of that wisdom is knowing that we come from a culture positively obsessed with physical safety.

We give up if something doesn’t seem to work quickly. We Westerners tend to start strong and optimistic. But if our work doesn’t prove fruitful relatively quickly, we tend to lose heart and move on to greener pastures. What this means in difficult contexts like Central Asia is that Westerners give up after the first or second implosion of their church plant, feeling that this must mean they have been doing something wrong. This is often accompanied by a dramatic conversion toward a different kind of methodology as well, usually one where the Westerner is insulated from the same kind of disappointment. Often, if the missionary had simply kept pushing and plodding a little longer, their church plant would have stabilised. The key here is to understand that Western culture, with its expectations of quick formulaic success, doesn’t often set us missionaries up for the kind of stubborn faithfulness truly needed on the field.

We trust others naïvely. When it comes to other people, we Westerners tend to view everyone as trustworthy until proven otherwise. But in cultures saturated with deception, betrayal, and hypocrisy, many people are simply not naturally trustworthy. Just as we have been trained by our culture with a bent toward authenticity and trust, others have been trained with a bent toward duplicity and distrust. And while this can make for lots of cross-cultural misunderstandings in normal relationships, it can spell disaster when a divisive person, abuser, or wolf comes to prey on the church. These predator types will run circles around us Westerners if we do not learn to be more shrewd and discerning in how we extend trust and responsibility to others. A good way to compensate for this weakness is to extend trust in small ways until someone’s trustworthiness can be proven over time – and to be ready to move quickly and with unity when a predator is revealed.

We confuse niceness for love. It’s been said that the first ‘commandment’ for Western evangelicals is “Thou shalt be nice.” But often, biblical faithfulness requires doing and saying things that do not feel nice, at least not on the surface. Pointing out sin and the need for repentance doesn’t feel nice. Neither does church discipline, nor standing up for women not preaching in church, nor telling someone they shouldn’t take the Lord’s supper because they’re not a believer. But each of these things is, in fact, loving. Something in Western culture has primed us to confuse niceness with love. We would do well to define love biblically and to know that that is true kindness.

We try to pretend we’re not rich. We Western missionaries are often much wealthier than our local friends. Sometimes this is true across the board. Sometimes, it may not be true in material wealth, but it is true in terms of connections, opportunities for upward mobility, or even things like books. Western culture emphasizes how we are all equal, so we are uncomfortable acknowledging these differences in wealth. We try to ignore them, but this doesn’t fool our local friends. A better way forward is to follow the Bible’s specific encouragements for the rich. We who are rich in this age are to glory in how the gospel humbles us, and makes us beggars just like it does every other sinner. We are to be rich in good works, generous, and eager to help others with the wealth we’ve been entrusted with. It’s not sinful to be rich, which is good, because in some of these ways, we are stuck with our wealth. But it is sinful to not seek to be faithful stewards of what we’ve been given.

We prioritize a vague Christian ‘unity’ over defined partnership. Most of us Western Christians have drunk deeply of the Kool-Aid that says ‘doctrine divides, Jesus unites.’ We care deeply about unity in the body of Christ, but the way we pursue that unity is by downplaying or sidestepping our very real differences and convictions. This is not the kind of unity that can really hold together when things get hard. Instead, it’s far better to define our unity, acknowledging where we have common ground, where we have serious differences, and what kinds of partnerships that frees us up for. This kind of posture not only equips me to partner in some way with (almost) anyone, but it also keeps me from the mistaken position that I should only partner with those who think exactly as I do. Again, the practice of theological triage here makes all the difference.

We don’t understand the importance of infrastructure for long-term impact. If previous generations of Western missionaries got sidetracked by having to maintain massive missionary infrastructure, recent generations have swung to the opposite extreme. The reality is that missionary families and local believers, after local churches have been established, need things like schools, employment, Christian marriages and burials, theological education, and decent healthcare in order to stay and establish a solid long-term presence. Even owning property instead of renting can mean a greater ability to withstand persecution. With church planting remaining as the vital core of missions, we need to recognize the importance of infrastructure for more effective long-term Christian presence and witness in a given context.

We try to erase those we’ve fallen out with. When Western missionaries part ways because of conflict, as we so often do, we try to memory-hole our former colleagues. We fail to mention the key part they played on our team or in our ministry, instead preferring to avoid mentioning them altogether. Instead, we should honor them as Luke honors Barnabas in the book of Acts. We can be honest about the fact that we parted ways because of conflict. But we should also be honest and grateful for how God used these brothers and sisters in our work.

We make saving people from hell our central motivation. I’m thankful that so many Western missionaries on the mission field still believe in hell. This is a courageous posture that shows real theological spine. However, some very bad things happen when we make saving people from hell our central motivation in missions. First, we come under immense pressure because of the crushing weight of the multitudes around us every day, headed to a Christless eternity. I’ve heard missionaries say that they can’t sleep at night because of this pressure. Second, this pressure leads to the development of unhealthy, rapid methodologies that try to do the math to see how many people need to hear the gospel in X amount of time, given things such as the current population growth rate and death rate. Turns out a hell-centered motivation is still a man-centered motivation. Instead, the glory of God and his future words of approval, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” should be our primary motivation.

We get offended when others disagree with our methods. We Westerners really struggle with the concept that someone can truly be for us, or love us, while deeply disagreeing with our lifestyle or methods. Christians understand how this is possible when we consider that homosexual friend or relative we have. But when it comes to our practices on the mission field, we missionaries feel that other missionaries or pastors back home should not be critiquing our work if they are truly for us. Rather, we need to realize that others being concerned that our work isn’t healthy or biblical is, in fact, one very important way they can show us Christian love.

We are not aware of why we respond to conflict or suffering the way we do. Many Western missionaries arrive on the field without going through the kind of counseling that helps them understand how they respond to conflict and suffering, and why. Without this sort of wisdom, when conflict or suffering comes, we often fall into old, sinful patterns or blow up all over our colleagues. The fact is that there are deeply personal patterns of sin and unbelief and aspects of suffering in our stories that shape how we respond when things get hard. We need to carefully bring the word of God to bear on our stories so that we can recognize wrong responses to conflict and suffering, remember where those things come from in our story, and choose to now walk in the light.

We signal to our spouses and kids that our work is more important than they are. Countless missionary kids grow up with the sense that their parents’ work is more important than they are. Their parents never tell them this, but in so many ways, that is the signal that is sent. We need to be aware of this message that goes hand-in-hand with our Western approach to work and ministry, and to directly combat it, both in word and deed. May the next generation of Western MKs grow up knowing deep down that while their parents often had to sacrifice family time for ministry, they were always more important to mom and dad than the ministry was.

I’m sure this long list is not conclusive, but these are some of the common and major handicaps that we have seen Western missionaries bring with them to the mission field. For the sake of the nations, we need to be aware of these default ways that we have been shaped by our culture and to seek to reform our approach accordingly. The weaknesses of Western missionaries a hundred years ago are mostly very different from our weaknesses today, and in some cases, on the opposite end of the pendulum.

What then should we Western missionaries do to compensate for these handicaps? Here again, in summary, is what I recommend:

Come to the field and leave the field with the careful counsel of the believing community.

Build deep and rich friendships of spiritual equality with local believers.

Trust ultimately in the power of God’s Word and Spirit rather than your expertise.

Don’t let fear of contaminating culture paralyze you, but be intentional in the culture mixing that will inevitably take place.

Prioritize the Bible over culture, especially when it seems costly.

Go as deep in language and culture as possible.

For good contextualization, be open to all of your biblical options, even the ones that feel old-fashioned or foreign.

Carefully assess cultural forms and their meanings to see if they should be redeemed, contested, or rejected.

Remember that healthy work is often slow, small, and time-tested, and don’t be pulled in by the silver bullet methodologies.

Hold firmly and graciously to your convictions and beliefs, but hold your methodologies loosely.

Organize effectively and build institutions.

Embrace the goodness of authority and seek to exercise it and submit to it biblically.

Learn how to easily define and explain what a biblical church is.

Instead of making the mission field the lab for your church fantasies, reproduce sound churches that have the same core ingredients as all healthy churches everywhere.

Whenever possible, become an accountable member of a church on the mission field.

Exercise your legitimate spiritual authority as an ambassador of Christ by leading, teaching, baptizing, and in general modeling Christian faithfulness by example.

Embrace all the Bible’s options for church sizes and enjoy each season of church that God gives you.

Define reproducibility as broadly as the Bible does, and be aware of any arbitrary personal timelines for this that you may be bringing with you.

Make godly character and its development the strategy for raising up leaders, not salaried positions.

Stay committed to reaching your focus people group without neglecting the other believers and seekers God brings your way while you do this.

Be open, honest, and thankful for the strengths of Western culture.

Take wise risks and beware of the West’s infatuation with physical safety.

Keep going, even if faithful work takes decades to bear fruit.

Trust others wisely and shrewdly test for trustworthiness, knowing that some are enemies of the cross

Love others faithfully, even when that means you’re accused of not being ‘nice.’

If you are a Western missionary, you are wealthy; seek to steward it well.

Pursue defined partnership and clarified unity.

Invest in infrastructure for the future of the local believers.

Honor those you’ve fallen out with.

Make God’s glory and affirmation your central motivation, rather than hell.

Be open to others’ concerns about your missionary work.

Learn how you respond to conflict and suffering and why.

Make sure your kids know they are more important than your ministry.

Embrace this kind of posture, Western missionary friends, and we will have, by God’s grace, compensated for many of our cultural handicaps. And I believe our lives and work will show the difference.

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.

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Why the Villagers Demanded Bible Teaching… and Ate Our Dog

When I was a two-year-old, my family lived in a highland village of Melanesia. We were only there for one year, living in another mission agency’s house while they awaited the arrival of a new family from Australia, and while we waited for an additional missionary house to be built in a small government station town about twenty minutes up the road.

My first memories are from this village missionary house. It perched on a gentle slope overlooking a broad valley of coffee gardens, banana trees, and endless wrinkles of little grassy or wooded ridges interwoven with rivers and streams as far as the eye could see. The sunsets were incredible.

From that house, I remember one of my older brothers showing me how to climb up onto the kitchen counter so we could get a sneak peek at my birthday cake, hidden up high in a cabinet. I remember Christmas morning, and trying to ride my new bike (with training wheels) down the wooden hallway. I remember swaying in the hammock outside, side by side with the kind local man who worked for the mission, maintaining the property. And I remember one day when that hammock broke on us and we suddenly plummeted to the ground.

Like most who served in that country, the missionaries who previously lived there had a dog on the property for security. This dog was a large rottweiler named Yankee. He is the first dog that I remember, and to me, he always seemed like a gentle, if smelly, giant. To this day, the pungent smell on my hand after petting a large dog long very much in need of a bath takes me back to those early years, and to memories of hanging around property with the local workman and Yankee the rottweiler.

While there, we also got a blue heeler puppy that we named Toro, who ended up not nearly as kid-friendly or mentally stable as Yankee was. Perhaps this was because the older and bigger Yankee would steal food from the puppy Toro’s bowl when we weren’t looking. Both of these dogs would eventually come to sad ends. Toro ended up dying later because he was a real punk of a dog who liked to hang by his teeth from the trunks of palm trees and didn’t know when to not pick a fight with stronger dogs. Yankee ended up dying, well, as a sort of sacrifice, which perhaps makes up for his crimes of stealing food from a puppy.

After the new missionary family arrived from Australia and we moved out, our families became fast friends. We lived pretty close to one another, and their kids were around the same ages as my brothers and I were, so we attended one another’s birthday parties and played Legos, pirates, and Star Wars together. These Aussie missionaries tried earnestly but in vain to teach us the proper way to pronounce ‘water.’ “It’s not waaderr, it’s woltuh.” At least we weren’t pronouncing it in the Philly way, like our dad’s side did, which was wooder. At that point, I couldn’t pronounce any of my R’s anyway, so no matter what accent I chose, it tended to just come out as waddle.

In those years, the dad of this family miraculously survived two events. First, he survived being struck by lightning. One day, he was hammering tent pegs out in the yard as rain clouds rolled in, when a lightning bolt struck the corrugated metal roof of the house, shot through the hammer in his raised hand, and plunged into the dirt of the yard. Uncle Phil, as we and the other MKs called him, survived this, shaken but okay. But Poor Yankee was left blind because of his proximity to the strike.

According to the beliefs of the local villagers, anyone whose house was struck by lightning was doomed, cursed by the spirits to die. So, they waited with certainty for Uncle Phil’s death. In their experience, no one was powerful enough to escape this doom once the lightning had struck. They must have seen this happen enough times because by that point, they believed, with deep tribal conviction, that this was simply the way the world worked.

Not long after this, the omen seemed to come true. Uncle Phil, his pickup, and the trailer he was towing for another missionary family slipped off the slick clay road and went rolling down the side of a mountain to certain doom. The road he went over the side of had a steep drop-off on one side, similar to the ones that I used to peer over in fear when my family would drive through the mountains (I still occasionally have dreams about these kinds of highland drop-offs and the car I’m in careening over them).

Anyone who looked down that long, steep slope and saw the pickup smashed at the bottom would have thought that he was a dead man. But amazingly, Uncle Phil crawled out of the crumpled vehicle still alive. He hadn’t had his seatbelt on, so when the truck went over the edge, he had been jostled in between the two front seats, where he had been protected from the metal and glass that had been smashed inward by the car’s long roll down the mountainside. He was quickly medevaced to Australia, and word of the accident was sent back to the village.

The villagers, of course, were certain that he would die and they would never see him again. But Uncle Phil did not die in Australia. He came back, alive and well. They had never seen anything like this. No one, in their long experience and oral memory, no one had survived the death sentence that came about after having their house struck by lightning. There must be something very different about this happy Australian Christian man. His Jesus must be more powerful than even the most powerful laws dispensed by the local spirits of the trees, rivers, and mountains.

This is how a church was born in that village. My parents had led one man to faith in the village during our year there. He, in turn, had led two more to faith. But when Uncle Phil got back, the village demanded multiple Bible classes every week. Even though Phil and his wife hadn’t yet mastered the tribal language, the requests were so strong that they went ahead with the teaching both in the trade language and, with the help of the first believer from the village, the tribal language as well.

As is so often the case in fear-power contexts like Melanesia, a demonstration of Jesus’ superior power is what the Spirit used to shock the locals awake so they would take the gospel message seriously. It’s not so very different from what often happens in Central Asia when Muslims have dreams. It’s not the only way the Spirit vindicates the gospel in these sorts of contexts, but it does seem to be one of his favorite approaches.

Sadly, this story is also how the very good boy, Yankee the rottweiler, met his end. After the lightning strike, blind Yankee was no longer a very useful guard dog, or really able to do very much at all. So, in a village area where locals struggle to get enough protein, and where their kids have large distended bellies from poor nutrition, Yankee was put down and given to the village for sustenance. It must have been a hard call for Uncle Phil and his family, and one I’m not sure I could have made. But I’m sure their hope was to be as good a steward as they could be of everything God had given them to reach the villagers, even their now-blind dog.

And thus a lightning strike led to the birth of a new church and the tragic end of old Yankee at the same time.

There are probably not many dogs in history who played a part in missionary breakthrough. John Paton’s little terrier, Clutha, comes to mind. But perhaps there is some kind of hall of honor in the New Jerusalem for good doggos that played faithful roles in the spread of the gospel. If so, I hope Yankee gets a mention there.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

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

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here.

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

Photo from Unsplash.com

How I Became A Yogurt Water Drinker

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.

Why Did The Lystrans Think Paul and Barnabas Were Hermes and Zeus?

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.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

The Bible’s Multiple Lenses for Understanding The Unreached

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.

Photo from Unsplash.com

Mics in The Water And Other Baptism Blunders

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.

*Names changed for security

Photo by Nate Neelson on Unsplash

Two Paralytics Have Their Sins Forgiven

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.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Church Membership on The Mission Field is Inefficient – Or Is It?

“No, we didn’t want to join a church, and we didn’t start one. I didn’t come here to plant a church and didn’t want to get pulled into all that would entail. I came here to translate the Bible. And for a number of years, the expat house fellowship that we led every week went great. But in recent years, we’ve had to deal with some serious sin issues among those who attend. And let me tell you, I have spent so much time trying to deal with these problems that I have found myself thinking maybe it would have been more efficient if we had just started a church in the beginning after all!”

I found this confession from an older missionary very insightful.

Here was another admission that one of the primary reasons for so many missionaries sidestepping the local church on the mission field is the Western value of task-driven efficiency. This value is often a strength of Western culture, but when it causes us Westerners to neglect other areas of biblical faithfulness, such as a week-in-week-out commitment to a church in our community, it becomes an idol. In this case, this missionary couple was so focused on their good task of translating the Bible that they decided that joining a local church on the field, or planting one, would take up too much of their time, time that they felt would be better stewarded by a singular focus on the task they’d been sent to do.

A huge number of missionaries overseas are not members of local churches on the field. Nor are they interested in doing the work to transform their team or coalition of missionary partners into an organized church. A few of them will have more advanced reasoning for this, sometimes related to missiologist Ralph Winter’s sodality vs. modality framework (a position to be analyzed in a future post). Other missionaries serve in places with no churches, no churches healthy enough to join, or no team or locals to form into a church. But many coming out of the West simply no longer have the biblical instincts or ecclesiology to feel that they should join or form a church on the field. “Isn’t it enough to meet weekly for bible teaching, songs, and prayer? Wherever two or three are gathered, right? Isn’t my team my church?” Add to this posture that joining or starting a church seems so, well, time-consuming, and it’s no wonder that the Western missionaries who do join churches on the field, or start churches that they then join, are the oddballs.

No, many, many missionaries think that the best thing is to retain their membership in their churches back in the homeland while they perennially sidestep the local church in their actual geographic locale. This all too common posture in the name of stewarding the time is both misguided and shortsighted.

The missionary’s confession I began with is a good example of what can go wrong when missionaries on the field commit themselves to what I’ve dubbed elsewhere, ‘weekly missionary chapel’, instead of joining or starting an actual local church. This family thought things would be simpler with a loosely defined house worship gathering every week with a bunch of other missionaries. Even when a good international church was planted in their city, they chose to stay separate from it and continue their house fellowship.

However, that earlier simplicity disappeared once serious sin arose among the attendees. Why? Well, there were no recognized pastors for this gathering, just a small team of casually-designated ‘leaders.’ There was no real system of membership, just a vague agreement among the missionaries attending about who was allowed to come (no locals, mind you). There was no mechanism for church discipline because from the very beginning, the aim of this group was to not be a church. The missionaries attending this group who ended up in sin were members of their sending churches back in America, so what kind of spiritual authority could the ‘leaders’ of this group really exert over them?

As wise Central Asians say, “Pray, but tie your camel tight.” And as wise Westerners says, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” Set out to establish an efficient pseudo-church but haphazardly leave out a bunch of the biblical stuff that feels too time-consuming, and you are asking for trouble. Those biblical structures are there for a reason.

And yet, for most missionaries, it continues to feel simpler, more focused, and more efficient to sidestep the local church on the mission field. However, as we’ve seen, this means that when there are serious problems to deal with, they then have to quickly cobble together new systems to deal with them. Yet because they’re intentionally not a church, they don’t have clear biblical guidance or precedence for the structures and mechanisms they build. Instead, they’re just depending on their own wisdom and on what seems practical. Dealing with conflict and sin is always time-consuming, even in a healthy church, but reinventing the wheel and cobbling together solutions in this way ends up taking so much more time in the end (not to mention how it ends up hurting people).

Consider how coming to an agreement on a doctrinal statement may seem very time-consuming. But that process is far more efficient in the long run than suddenly having to figure out what to do every time a missionary with doctrine quite different from yours wants to join your house group.

Hammering out a church covenant also seems like a laborious process. But it’s far more efficient than having to explain in the middle of mess after mess why certain behaviors and not others justify expulsion from the group when you’ve never mentioned them before.

Taking time away from your main ministry to disciple believers from other people groups – maybe even in English – might seem like a costly side quest. But it’s not nearly as inefficient as your team burning out because you tried to live for a decade on the mission field without truly being connected to the Body.

These are just a few examples of how joining a local church on the field or planting one may seem inefficient in the short term, but in the long run will counterintuitively mean actually going faster. When conflict comes, there are biblical mechanisms to deal with it. When issues arise, clarity on how to navigate them already exists. When your gifts fail, the diversity of the local church comes to the rescue. Investing in the local church always pays off, and often in ways we never could have predicted.

Missionaries, let’s not sidestep the local church on the mission field. Let’s either start one or join one. If we’re in a context where this isn’t possible, we should pray and work for that to eventually change. Let’s not continue to pretend that church membership in a body on another continent is a good long term posture for our families – good stopgap measure though it may be. And please, let’s not hold ourselves aloof from the local church for the sake of efficiency.

After all, we are not called to be efficient above all else. We are called to be faithful. And that will often involve things that, at least initially, feel quite inefficient indeed.

We only need to raise 15k ($1,250 per month) to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

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

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

Photo from Unsplash.com

Bedbugs in The Bowels of The City

The plan was simple. And at no point was it supposed to involve bedbugs or mafia-style van transfers.

I was carrying luggage needed for two single gals from our church who were headed to Western China for six months. They were flying out from a different part of the US, so we would meet up in the Beijing airport, then take the final flight together to the city where our missionary friends were living. On the way, my route had me spending the night in Guangzhou. Since the airport hotel had looked like it might break the trip budget, and I was at the time a youthful 26-year-old missions pastor, I just planned on sleeping in the airport.

Shortly before midnight, I had just got the bags from baggage claim and was scanning the airport for good spots to camp out, when the light started turning off. Airport staff then started shooing people out of the buliding. It didn’t seem like I would be able to sleep in the airport after all.

The airport emptied remarkably quickly, and I found myself following the signs for the airport hotel. What else was to be done? Close to the external doors, I was approached by a kind-looking middle-aged Chinese woman holding a laminated paper that said ‘Airport Hotel.’ She didn’t speak English, and I didn’t know any Chinese, but we nodded enthusiastically at one another to indicate that I was looking for the thing her sign advertised. She then motioned for me to follow.

True, the picture on her sign didn’t have any branding on it or necessarily look like the airport hotel I had seen online, but perhaps it was another one nearby. After all, major airports tend to have multiple airport hotels. If it were a different hotel, chances were good it would be more affordable.

We walked out to the curb and got into a small white van, where the big bags were lugged into the back. I settled in for what I assumed would be a short transfer. Sure enough, after only a few turns, we pulled into the parking lot of a big, shiny hotel.

This was where things started to get weird. Rather than dropping me off at the door, they pulled up next to an identical small white van in the parking lot. Then, they transferred the bags from one van to the other, indicating that they wanted me to also get into the back of the second van.

I didn’t know any Chinese, and they didn’t know any English, so I motioned questioningly toward the airport hotel fifty or so yards away. The two men driving the second van shook their heads and pointed at the back of the van. At this point, the first van with the woman drove off. I tried to ask if they were taking me to another airport hotel, and it seemed like maybe-possibly-hopefully that’s what they were trying to tell me in Chinese.

So, in what was not my soundest of travel decisions, I got in the back of the second van, hoping for the best. As soon as we started driving away from the hotel, I realized I may have made a serious mistake. I had no international data on my cell phone. I had no way of contacting anyone as I, and the bags I was supposed to be safeguarding, were driven away from the airport and into a strange and foreign city.

As the next half hour passed, I became increasingly concerned. We had left the major roads and had entered what I can only describe as the bowels of the city. We drove through tight alleyways full of wires, puddles, and humming neon signs advertising local establishments that had clearly seen better days. I am typically quite good at problem-solving in a pinch, but as we drove deeper and deeper into the dark maze of alleyways, I was utterly at a loss for what I should do next. I decided I might as well sit tight until we reached our destination, and simply try to make the best of things once we arrived – even if that meant I was soon to find myself robbed, stranded, or hostage to the Chinese mafia.

As I chewed on how my poor wife and toddlers might never know what became of me, I made a promise to myself, one I have largely kept to this day, to never travel again without some kind of way to contact others, some kind of working mobile data. And to keep an eye out for kind-looking middle-aged foreign women holding signs who turn out to have nefarious intentions. I chewed on this last one, especially. If it had been a young, attractive woman, I would have been more on guard. But her appearance, like that of a friendly 3rd grade teacher who just wants to tell you about the book fair, had been remarkably disarming.

At last, the van came to a stop. I leaned over and glanced up out the window. To my surprise and relief, I saw a faded hanging sign, one with the unmistakable shape of a plane on it. The building we stopped in front of was the sketchiest, smallest, and dirtiest airport hotel I had ever seen. But it was, in fact, some kind of lodging establishment. It was only fifteen feet wide or so, and three or four stories up, sandwiched in a row of other similar establishments that dripped and smoked and bulged and sprouted blackened wires and old AC compressors.

My erstwhile captors groaned and complained as they heaved the girls’ very heavy and very bulky suitcases up to the half room that functioned as the lobby and front desk. Then, they simply drove off into the darkness, leaving me with an older, jaded-looking man who seemed the proprietor. He was very unhappy that all I had on me was a credit card and gave me some kind of a talking-to, which, of course, I understood none of. When he was done, I simply smiled and shrugged and motioned that I had no cash on me whatsoever.

Resigned, the man muttered and walked me back out into the alley, where he pointed up the street toward a dilapidated ATM. To my great surprise, one of my cards worked. The clerk took something like $15 from me in Chinese yuan and then took me up to my room.

By this point, I was exhausted and more than ready to pass out on the little bed. But even though disarming middle-aged Chinese school teachers had not been on my threat radar, bedbugs definitely were. My wife and I had already faced them a couple of times, an unfortunate but common outcome of living in refugee communities in Louisville’s South End. I had learned the hard way the vital importance of always checking the sheets and seams of the mattress near the head of the bed for the tell-tale black spotting and little shiny bumps that indicate an infestation.

As soon as I knelt down and pulled back the sheet, I knew it was bad. There was not only widespread black spotting, but lots of the little reddish-brown bumps as well, evidence that baby bedbugs were growing. That meant the grown-up ones were also nearby, ready to munch on my Yankee blood as soon as I fell asleep.

By the grace of God, my main concern in that moment was not how to avoid being a midnight snack for bedbugs, but how to avoid accidentally infesting the home of the missionaries we were on our way to stay with. They’d had such a rough go of it already and were currently alone, the only missionaries in their city of several million. The last thing they needed was their missions pastor to bless them with a stubborn infestation of Guangzhou bloodsuckers.

So, I hatched a plan. I remembered that bedbugs don’t travel on bodies. They travel on clothes and luggage. So, I piled the bags up high on a table in the far corner. Then, I made the decision that the most loving thing to do was to sleep naked with my clothes for morning safely hung up in the shower. The bugs may get a free meal, but they would not get a free ride to Western China.

I fell asleep remembering a Korean friend from Bible college who was petrified of spiders and had to sleep on an old mattress on the dorm floor one night. Terrified, she poured out her heart to God in prayer, asking for angelic protection from the bugs – and awoke in the morning to see a dozen nighttime arachnids and insects seemingly struck dead by the angel of the Lord, legs up in the air, forming a little ring around the mattress where she had slept. Perhaps the deliverer of Hezekiah and my Korean friend would guard me as well from my own little army of six-legged foes.

I slept remarkably well considering these bleak surroundings, and woke up downright refreshed. I didn’t notice any dead bugs in a ring around me, but neither did I notice any bites or blood streaks on the sheets. I scanned my body for bugs, hopped in the shower, dressed, and went downstairs to greet the same grumpy man who had welcomed me the night before. He offered me some pork bawza dumplings. Anytime you get to have some form of pork for breakfast, things are on the upswing.

From there, things were remarkably smooth. Back to the airport. On to Beijing, where I met up with the two gals from my church. Then, on to our destination in Western China. The girls got their stuff there safely, I got to visit a family on the field who had not had anyone come to visit them yet, and – God be praised – I did not infest their apartment with bedbugs.

On a later trip, we visited some Chinese friends in Guangzhou and had a wonderful time, seeing a very different side of the city and the culture than I had on that fateful night when I was traveling solo. But my wife and I still laugh (and shudder) as we think about that night when I rode that sketchy second van down into the bowels of the city, thinking I was getting kidnapped by some kind of East Asian mafia.

Thankfully, it was not a kidnapping, only a relatively modest con job, one where the disarming lunch lady and her associates duped unwitting passengers into staying somewhere they’d never have chosen to stay willingly. It had that slimy deceptive feel to it, you know the one, like when that free breakfast suddenly turns into a wild eyed attempt to sell you a timeshare. Except that even timeshare presentations don’t mean you have to sleep as naked sacrificial tribute to the bugs.

And yet, considering the various pieces that could have gone very wrong, overall I felt I had escaped relatively unscathed. I determined that next time I’m stuck in an airport quickly shutting down, I’ll just pay the outrageous rate to stay in the legit airport hotel. That day would, in fact, come, many years later, far away in frozen Munich, dragging my exhausted kids in tow. But that is a tale for another post and another day.

For now, good night, sleep tight, and well, you know the rest…

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 23k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

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

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

*Names changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

Should I Keep Sharing the Gospel With Someone Who Has Repeatedly Rejected It?

Every believer who shares the gospel has a relationship or two with unbelievers that they don’t quite know what to do with. This might be a family member, a friend, or a coworker, someone who has heard the gospel many times, yet has not embraced it. Their bearing toward the gospel can run the spectrum from super friendly to somewhat hostile, but for whatever reason, they still want to be in regular contact with you. Or, in the case of family or coworkers, they are somewhat stuck in a relationship with you.

For my American readers, today is July 4th, Independence Day. That means you may even today find yourself at a cookout with just the sort of person I’m describing.

The question is, what should our posture be toward these sorts of people? Should we go on sharing the gospel when they seem so, well, hardened? Should we keep investing precious time and relational energy into those who have rejected the gospel so many times, especially when there are others who have never heard?

The answer, I believe, is a nuanced yes. In this post, I want to share how I have tried to navigate this over the years, in hopes that these principles and practical suggestions might prove helpful to others also wrestling with this.

First, we should aim to be sure that the gospel these individuals have rejected is actually the gospel, and not a misunderstanding of it. Far too often, we think someone has rejected the gospel when they’re actually rejecting a caricature of it. Remember, lost people are spiritually dead. Dead people do not naturally and easily comprehend the meaning of the good news you are sharing with them. They misconstrue what we are saying constantly. It often takes a lot of repetition before it becomes clear that they are rejecting the gospel from a place of having firmly grasped its message. Even Paul asks for prayer that he might make his gospel message clear (Col 4:4). But lost people can reach a place of rejection from understanding. As one of my Central Asian friends recently said to me when discussing how Jesus takes our curse upon himself, “I’m a Muslim and not a Christian, but wow, I can see how this is the heart of the Bible right here.”

He sees and understands the heart of the Bible. But he doesn’t believe it. Since that’s the case, what do I do with him?

This brings me to my second point. If this person is still open to spiritual conversation, then from here, I’m still going to aim to regularly seed my conversation with biblical truth. If, at this point, my friend has heard the message of the gospel clearly a good number of times, I will often back off from repeatedly pressing to the center of the gospel itself, instead looking for opportunities to inject all kinds of other aspects of the truth into our conversations. My hope in doing this is to impress upon my friend how the gospel affects and transforms everything else. I want to focus on the fruit of the gospel, the power and change that the gospel and the rest of God’s truth bring, in hopes that my friend will then want to revisit the gospel itself from one of these different angles.

Paul reminds the Romans that God’s kindness is meant to lead them to repentance (Rom 2:4). It may be that some simple but genuine remarks upon God’s kindness in a conversation are what lead to breakthrough. Or, it may be talking about how the faith transforms marriage and parenting. Or, how eternity and resurrection give us an answer for the countless desires we have that in this life will never be fulfilled. Sometimes it feels unnatural or redundant to revisit God, Man, Christ, Response yet again, but there are a thousand other angles of truth I can touch on in conversation that can strengthen and support that central refrain.

Injecting my conversation with spiritual truth also gives me a sense of whether or not my friend or relative wants to get into the claims of the gospel in this particular moment or setting. Believers can, with practice, learn how to naturally and tactfully fold spiritual truth into our everyday conversations. And every time we do that, it functions like an indirect invitation. If we are continually and graciously opening the door like this, there is no need to force unbelievers through it. If they are ready and willing, they will often take the conversation to the next step – and sometimes even reveal the specific questions they are wrestling with. This approach is a great way to not only see if unbelievers are open to spiritual conversation but also to keep the conversations in a place where our friend or relative feels that they consented to once again discussing these weighty and personal things.

For long-term relationships, this sense of consenting to the spiritual conversation is very important. We want to avoid being seen as the person at work or family gatherings who forces gospel conversation on others against their will. In the long run, this type of posture will serve more to close doors than open them. Rather, we want others to see us as those who genuinely care for them, genuinely believe the gospel, and truly enjoy speaking about Jesus.

Third, when someone has repeatedly rejected the gospel through my words, I want to double down on winning them with my life. As Peter says about wives married to unbelievers,

Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives, when they see your respectful and pure conduct.

– 1 Peter 3:1-2

We must use words to make sure that the unbelievers in our lives have clearly understood the gospel. But after that point, there are times when it is not only appropriate, but even faithful to focus on displaying the gospel to them ‘without a word.’ Similar to seeding our conversations with other aspects of biblical truth, we can show by our lives and actions the power and the difference that the gospel makes.

One refugee friend who came to faith when I was a newlywed told me that observing my marriage was a big part of how the gospel came to make sense for him. I was surprised by this, since we were so new at the whole marriage thing, but I praised God for it nonetheless. This brother and I had argued about the gospel for months on end. At times, I was convinced we were getting nowhere. But the whole time, he was not just arguing, but also watching.

This point helps us know what to focus on when we’re not sure what to do next with an unbelieving friend who has rejected the gospel. But it’s also particularly helpful for family and friends who have made it clear to us that the door is closed for any conversation about spiritual things. What do we do with that kind of relationship? In spite of all the pushback against that “preach the gospel, when necessary use words,” quote, the fact is that our lives do, in fact, ‘preach’ something. At least in the fact that they powerfully illustrate, apply, and argue for what we’ve already verbalized and would like to verbalize again.

Fourth, we should consider how to stay in relationship with unbelievers who have rejected the gospel, even while we prioritize others who are more open. We are called to redeem the time and untold numbers Jesus’ sheep are out there, just waiting to hear his voice (Col 4:3, John 10:16). We should not be spending all our time on those who have clearly heard and clearly rejected the gospel. At the same time, we do not want to cut off those who have heard and rejected and who are still open to relationship with us. How should we thread this needle?

One practical way to do this is to have regular gatherings that are open to all. These sorts of gatherings are places where you can always invite that stubborn or seemingly hard-hearted unbelieving friend, even if most of your time is spent elsewhere investing in those who are showing a genuine openness. When we were doing refugee ministry in the US, we hosted weekly community meals together with our community group. This was a time when we could invite all of our unbelieving friends for a no-expectations gathering of food and community. Similarly, when I was an English teacher in Central Asia, we had a weekly conversation cafe. If I didn’t feel I should prioritize a certain friend who had heard and rejected the gospel, I nevertheless had a time when the relationship could be maintained, and we could see each other.

Because the Holy Spirit is sovereign over salvation, not me, I want to keep the relationship going in the chance that, defying expectations, this person really is seeking the truth. Regular gatherings of this sort mean I have a place to invite all of them to, even while the bulk of my time goes to prioritizing those friends who are responsive to the truth.

The other advantage of having regular ‘bucket times’ like this is that unbelievers can, in this way, be exposed to believing community. This could have been a point by itself, since there is great power and wisdom in getting our unbelieving friends and family into places where they can see Christian friendships displayed. The Bible says our love for one another proves the incarnation and proves that we are Jesus’ disciples (John 13:35, 17:21). That’s one powerful apologetic. Also, we never know if exposure to some other believer with very different gifts than we have might be the key that leads to breakthrough for that unbeliever we’ve made so little progress with.

Fifth, we can continue to pray for those unbelievers who have repeatedly rejected the gospel, those whom we just don’t know what to do with. I remember reading how George Müller prayed for decades for one of his friends’ sons to believe. He didn’t give up praying for this young man, even after so many years had passed. Decades later, he repented and believed. There is great power in persistent prayer, even for those for whom we see no hope that they will ever believe. Spiritually, they are no harder to the gospel than we were before we believed. One sovereign word from God is all that is needed to break their resistance and to flood their hearts with the love of Christ. We might not know if we can or should say another word about the gospel to certain individuals. But we can keep praying for them. If they are still alive, the verdict is not yet out on their soul.

Sixth, and last, there is a category in scripture for unbelievers who reject the gospel and are therefore to be cut off by us, though still in hopes that they might be open at some point in the future. Jesus calls them ‘pigs’ and ‘dogs’ and in other places commands the disciples to wipe the dust off their feet in protest against their rejection (Matt 7:6, 10:14). It seems that there is a kind of evil and violent rejection of the gospel message that can occur, one that responds to pearls of gospel glory with fangs and violence or scandalously shameful rejection. The points I’ve made above are not for this kind of person, perhaps with the exception of persevering prayer. No, the purpose of this post has been to help us with those unbelievers who want to or have to stay in some kind of peaceful relationship with us.

For long-term relationships with unbelievers, seek to make sure the gospel is clearly understood. Seek to saturate your conversations with all kinds of spiritual truth. Seek to win them with your lives. Seek to invite them into community even when you can’t prioritize them. And pray for them with perseverance.

I am deeply troubled about my unbelieving friends who have heard the gospel so many times yet have not bowed the knee to Jesus. Like my Central friend who can pinpoint the heart of the Bible, I know that their situation is a very dangerous one. They have been exposed to so much light, and if they ultimately reject it, their fate will be worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah. And I will have been to them the aroma of death (2 Cor 2:15-16).

And yet, at the same time, I’m so thankful for my unbelieving friends who keep coming back around, even though they’ve rejected the gospel so many times. I desperately hope that if they are still open to friendship with me, then there may be some part of them that is also open to friendship with Jesus. The verdict on their soul is not out yet.

No, if they’re still living, there’s still hope.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? We need to raise 26k to be fully funded for our second year back on the field. You can help us with this here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

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

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

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