The True Riches of the Church

“With the way most plant churches among Muslims, we end up attracting only the rejects and the freaks,” said my friend with a scowl. “You’ll never start a movement that way.”

While spoken with some concerning overstatement, my friend’s comments were coming out of observations made within contemporary missiology, noting the largely ineffective traditional methods of church planting among Muslims. The shoe often fits. The congregations started by evangelical missionaries among Muslims have often attracted mostly the poor, the outcasts, and the mentally unstable. As the theory goes, most evangelical missionaries among Muslims have not focused enough on reaching the honorable leaders of the community – the patriarchs, chiefs, mullahs, and others. When these leaders are bypassed and the majority of attention is shown to those on the fringes of society, joining a movement to Jesus is prevented from being viewed as a real possibility by those in the mainstream of the culture – and especially by the leaders. And as I wrote in my previous post, these mental categories of “Not an option for people like me” or “It’s an option for people like me” really can make a practical difference in the mysterious interplay of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility.

I feel this critique. It is true that those of us coming from the West often bypass the societal leaders of an honor-shame community. We often do this even without thinking about it. “Why should I go visit the mullah or the neighborhood strongman? Can’t I just move in and get to work building relationships?” I myself have not done the best job of honoring the community’s leaders through preemptive visits of respect. I am wired as a grassroots, bottom-up reform kind of guy. And sometimes I just forget. Other times, a part of me wants to ignore these domineering leader types just to mess with their sense of self-importance. Perhaps this is the red-blooded American in me that has inherited some distaste for hierarchy and classism? Yet there is wisdom in considering how showing honor to those in positions of authority helps us to have a good testimony (Rom 13:7), creates space for us to cause some trouble, and may even open the door for these leaders to embrace a costly belief in Jesus – and perhaps for others to follow them. I need to be more balanced in this area.

And yet whenever this conversation comes up, I hear this line from church history echo in my mind, “These are the true treasures of the church.” This sentence was spoken by Lawrence (Lorenzo – from Spain), archdeacon of Rome in the year 258. Emperor Valerian had issued an order to have all the leaders in the Roman church killed. And as the one in charge of the church finances, he had ordered Lawrence to turn over the church’s treasure, and he would be spared. Lawrence asked for three days and then slyly distributed all the church’s money to the poor. He then marched the poor, the crippled, and widows into the presence of the emperor and when asked about the church’s treasure, proclaimed, “Come out and see the wondrous riches of God.” He was, of course, then put to death. Tradition says that he was roasted on a fire and that he also had a witty sense of humor. “I’m well done, turn me over!” he is alleged to have said while being killed (thereby becoming the patron saint of the poor and of chefs at the same time). I like this guy.

When Deacon Lawrence proclaimed the poor and the broken as the true treasures of the church, he was echoing Paul.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:26-31 ESV)

And he was echoing Jesus, who proclaimed that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor, and who scandalously befriended the sinners, tax collectors, and the demonized rejects.

This area is yet another tension we face as missionaries. We do attract the outcasts. And some of them are remarkably broken. Broken people take a lot of time and investment and while on the slow road of healing can wound many others around them. They are not always the most stable foundation for a new church. I often beg God to bring us stable locals who will not implode our fledgling groups because of their deep trauma and broken pasts. Yes, we are all broken to some degree. And yet we live in a region of the world with very recent (and ancient) scars from war, dictators, genocide, sanctions, and other horrific experiences. It seems as if everyone here is traumatized in one way or another. And this makes church planting in this place at times seem utterly impossible.

What are we to do? An ideal approach would seek to minister to both the outcasts and the leaders, improbable as that initially seems. This much is clear – In the end, we must not hinder the “little children” from coming to Jesus. The kingdom of God belongs to them. It would be just like God to build the foundation of the church among my focus people group on the nobodies and rejects, just like Jesus did 2,000 years ago with his group of motley Galileans. Does this openness to the “rejects and freaks” hinder a movement from taking place? The research may claim this, but I doubt it. That’s just not how the kingdom of God works. If it does prove a hindrance to multiplication, then so be it. It’s a risk I’m willing to take. What genuine believer, after all, could actually choose a movement of Christians that is mainstream and respectable, but not open to the broken and the outcasts? Is this really a better alternative? If I have to choose, I will opt to gather with those who repulse the respectable.

On the last day I would rather stand with the orphans and the widows than with those this world honors. This simply seems to be the route more consistent with the heart of God as displayed in the ministry of Jesus. That may mean we end up less “effective” in the metrics of missiology. But does that really matter when the king returns? Rather, we would be wise to pay attention to how he characterizes the ministry of his true, known, followers: “As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it unto me” (Matt 20:40).

Photo by Jouwen Wang on Unsplash

The Hundred Monkeys Principle

My current language helper is a man who has heard the gospel countless times. He has been helping my colleagues and partners learn the local language for several years now. And that means he has gotten a steady and gloriously unrelenting dose of gospel truth for a long time. He has not professed faith. However, he has read much of the Bible, even memorized portions, and has distanced himself considerably from Islam. He now considers himself a Qur’ani, a type of Muslim who rejects all the Islamic Hadith (authoritative traditions) and the Muhammad they describe. Much of everyday Islamic practice and theology is dependent on the Hadith. Limiting one’s self to the Qur’an alone is to essentially embrace a faith that is considered heretical to most Muslims. My hope is that this is only a way-station for my tutor, evidence that he has grasped the deeply different message of the Bible and that he is seriously (though slowly) wrestling with it.

When I have a local friend like this, I’m not always sure how I should proceed with direct evangelism when they have had so much truth shared with them by so many and have not yet responded. There is a danger of their heart being hardened as they get used to hearing the same message and yet there is also the possibility of one more good word shared being the straw that breaks the camel’s back (in a good way). I will often chew on if there are ways to expose them to other complimentary things that could add to the case made by gospel words they’ve heard so often.

Many of us tend to do this with family members and friends who have heard a great deal of gospel truth and yet are not yet believers. We weigh whether right now is the best time to go direct. Or, if now is a better time to let what has already been shared rest on their heart and mind, and to instead focus on modeling a gospel-transformed life, exposing them to beauty or hospitality or friendship or other categories that could play a part in their eventual surrender to Jesus. It’s a tension. I try to navigate it by regularly praying for opportunities to share the gospel. If the gospel is on the tip of my tongue, and I’m praying for chances to go direct, then I feel a much greater peace about not sharing it directly sometimes in relationships like this.

One of my supporting emphases with my tutor has been to share with him a lot of information about how people from his people group and other people groups are becoming followers of Jesus – and about the history of ancient Christianity in Central Asia. What am I trying to accomplish in this? Well, this tutor has grown up in a society where the overwhelming amount of his fellow countrymen are Muslims and can’t imagine being Christians. It’s not even considered an option. In the mysteries of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, there is something in the human mind that tends to be more spiritually open to those social streams that have precedence among one’s neighbors and ancestors. Those are viewed as the honorable, good, or at least decent, options.

For example, in my focus people group a person can be a Muslim. That is what is assumed and what is held out as the ideal. But interestingly, at least two other groups have managed to establish themselves as possibilities for identity – something a local could embrace and still be considered basically a member of his people group. These two groups would be the communists and the Zoroastrians. In the mind of most locals, it’s best by far to be a Muslim. But if you absolutely must apostatize, then it’s on some level acceptable to become a communist or a Zoroastrian. These are tolerable options. To become a Christian? That’s still not considered an option on the table.

Hence my attempt to share a lot of stories and data with my tutor about believers from his people group and region, current and past. I want his brain to begin to shift such that by repeated exposure to the idea that others like him have followed Jesus, he might begin to think and feel that it is an option for him as well. Now, I am under no illusions that this is the key to him being born again. The lightning of gospel conviction will have to strike. Only the Spirit can do that. And yet, switching metaphors, I am going to put as many rocks as I can out on top of the icy lake in hopes that when the sun rises, the ice will break and all the rocks will sink to the bottom. Perhaps the sun will even warm those stones such that the ice breaks sooner because of their presence.

I remember hearing a missions trainer years ago share about something he called the hundred monkeys principle. Apparently thousands of monkeys at some point were introduced to an island where there had previously been no monkey population. Researchers studied how they adapted to their new environment. These monkeys were not used to the ocean and so stayed a safe distance away from it. One day an adventurous monkey decided to take a bath in the ocean. The rest watched from their perches in the trees and didn’t join him. After a while of this monkey bathing alone, one more monkey joined him. It was only the two of them for the longest time, until at last there came a third. The number of monkeys not afraid to bathe in the ocean increased one-by-one, incrementally, until it reached ninety nine monkeys. But to the researchers’ amazement the following day there were thousands of monkeys bathing in the ocean. This 99th monkey represented some kind of sociological tipping point for the monkey population. A switch flipped somewhere internally. Now bathing in the ocean was actually a mainstream option.

Similar things happen with human populations. A given custom is viewed as not possible for “people like us.” The early adopters get persecuted and kicked out. But one day, if the adopters keep on increasing, that same custom is viewed as an acceptable option. As I recall, the other possible outcome of reaching this tipping point might not be a general acceptance of the new belief or custom, but could also be large-scale persecution as that movement is suddenly viewed by the mainstream as a very serious threat. Drawing on memory alone, I recall hearing this tipping point being somewhere in the range of 10% – 13%. Any sociologists or missiologists out there will have to correct me if this is off. For a parallel in the West, pay attention to the increasingly-heated rhetoric on immigration once the foreign-born reach this same threshold.

By sharing (safely) with my tutor about others from his people group who have believed, I am trying to nudge him to be more open to being one of the early adopters – and maybe someday even part of the tipping point. We’re a long way from that percentage currently as I write this post. There are always those who must be the first. And their salvation is extra miraculous in that they take a step that no one from their people group has ever taken before. Surely there is some special honor for these pioneers in eternity. But my tutor doesn’t have to be the first. And though I can’t fully explain it, he needs to know that. I am under obligation to do anything that I can do to remove unnecessary barriers to the gospel – cultural, sociological, whatever, such that the gospel itself is the primary offense. Normalize the idea of people like him following Jesus, and that could be one of the many steps the Holy Spirit uses to prepare him for that piercing moment of new birth.

After all, there’s no sense wrestling with the idea of being the first monkey to ever wash in the ocean when you’re actually monkey number forty seven. Others have blazed the trail, so let’s know and feel that deep down inside, and then turn back and consider the invitation yet another time.

Photo by Jakub Dziubak on Unsplash

What Is Central Asia?

Turns out it’s a bit more complicated to define the region of Central Asia than one might initially think. Geographically, I appreciate how this map divides the political states between homeland areas and those areas where some CA peoples are present, but not dominant. Notice all the countries that you might not think of as Central Asian where the darker homeland blue spills over into a predominantly white or light blue nation-state: Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and China.

Culturally, the best shorthand for summarizing this region is to organize it around two primary language and culture groups: Persian and Turkic. The largest people groups and the vast majority of the groups in this area are either Persian-related or Turkic-related. That helps bring some clarity to an otherwise messy situation. Someone working in Pakistan is clearly working in what’s normally politically and geographically called South Asia. But if they are working with Pashtuns (Persian-related) in the West of the country, then they are culturally and linguistically (and even geographically) very much in Central Asia. Part of the issue is the huge Eurasian landmass itself and the fact that the the cultural-linguistic spheres don’t necessary match the political and geographic borders. And then of course if you get into the mountains you will always find minority people groups and languages that will add more complexity to whatever principle of organization is used to label things.

Want to get a sense of what this region of the world feels like? Take a look at this intro video below. Parts of this video were filmed in the area where we serve, but yes, for security’s sake I’m going to have to keep you guessing as to which part of this very big region we ourselves live in.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah, it’s a Line Dance and a Picnic

Hallelujah, hallelujah, it's a line dance and a picnic 
For the return of Jesus, honorable clapping

ّWe are in the midst of the day that Christ returns 
Each and any colorful flower we place under his feet

Hallelujah, hallelujah, Christ is on his way
His return is soon, our hope is with him

We are in the midst of the day that Christ returns
Each and every colorful garment we place under his feet 

Hallelujah, hallelujah, Christ has come 
For the knowledge of God, he is the only way

We are in the midst of a project to record some local worship songs and some partners introduced us to this one. “It’s one of our believing friends’ favorites because it feels so local!” they said. And it’s true, in contrast to some of translated 90’s worship choruses, the melody is very much the local style. And the lyrics? Well, you bring in line dancing, picnics, and colorful flowers and you are speaking the love language of our local people group.

This is why it’s so important that local believers come to write their own worship songs. What Westerner would ever start a worship song or hymn like this? Hallelujah, hallelujah, it’s a line dance and a picnic? And yet in this culture, this is wedding language, family celebration language, the language of overflowing joy. These people burst out into line dancing whenever they are overcome with happiness. Just this past weekend we traveled to the top of a mountain during a snowfall. And what did we find there? A bunch of giddy locals playing music and line dancing in the snow (and also throwing snowballs at each other).

Our local climate is not exactly gentle. We have harsh winters and even harsher summers. But that means that locals are extra responsive to the gifts of beauty and green that creation gives. Every spring, when the land is reborn, it’s time for serious picnicking (I’ve never lived anywhere else where you have to factor in the reality of “picnic traffic”). How appropriate then that this song should envision the return of Christ, and the making of all things new, as a spring picnic scene.

Photo by The New York Public Library on Unsplash

Answered Prayers and Their Reckoning

There are many countries in the world that do not grant missionary visas. To be a missionary in these “creative access” countries, you must possess some other kind of visa – work, education, business, NGO, tourist, etc. This is our situation here in our corner of Central Asia. Cross-cultural workers like us end up with a complex identity – albeit one with a very long tradition in Christian history – where we are indeed teachers, NGO workers, or businesspeople, but we are these things in this place because they are our platform by which we gain access for ministry among unreached peoples and in unreached places. We have a multi-layered identity. And many of us work very hard to walk this tightrope well. Yet it is a tightrope.

We are followers of Jesus, and so we seek to be always truthful with our public identities. I must be able to have an identity that makes sense when the questions come – and to be able to lean into that public identity when necessary. And I need to be doing good work in that official role so that I’m not empowering the persecutor needlessly. There are real wolves out here in the mountains, seeking to devour us and our local friends. As an English teacher, having actual classes and flesh-and-blood students who are learning English from me is crucial. It provides them, me, and the local authorities more room to sidestep the attacks when the conversations about Jesus happen and the accusations come.

None of this has to be driven by fear. In fact, if it driven by fear, then that’s cause for reexamination. Instead, it should be driven by wisdom – shrewdness even – the kind that Jesus attributes to snakes of all things (Matt 10:16). This, right as he also calls us to be innocent as doves. Yes, that is quite the balance to try and strike. Pray for your missionary friends in creative-access countries.

Some leave the field after long years of struggling with the complexities of this kind of identity. They are tired of feeling schizophrenic, and from dealing with doubts about the integrity of their lifestyle. To be honest, we all feel like this sometimes. Others lean too far into making their public identity watertight. There seems to be an unspoken belief that “If I just can just strike the perfectly secure identity, then all our ministry dreams will come true and I won’t get kicked out of the country.” However, research has demonstrated that it’s actually the creative-access teams that are suspected by the local community of being missionaries are more likely to see churches planted. And then there’s also the new believers to take into account.

No matter how finely crafted your platform identity is, and how shrewdly you wear your different hats, your local friend who just came to faith can very easily blow it all up in one day – out of his love for Jesus, no less! Once those years of prayer are actually answered and locals come to faith, the unreached community around you is faced with some blunt facts. Their family or friends used to be Muslims (in my context anyway). Now they have apostatized. The channel for that was clearly their friendship with you, a foreigner. These blunt facts are present even if your newly believing friend strikes the perfect balance of boldness and wisdom as a new witness for Christ. But let’s be honest, what brand new believer doesn’t fall either too much on the side of fear or too much on the side of boldness? The bold ones in particular tend to provoke quite the blowback. They might lead dozens to faith! And in the process destroy years of careful visa and identity work.

Will we be OK with this bittersweet collateral damage that comes with a new creation? Is it worth it to get kicked out of a country because our evangelism has actually born fruit? When does access become an idol which we must protect at all costs? These are questions that are easy to answer from the clean categories of a training classroom. But they become a little bit harder to wrestle with once the costs of yet another transition has affected your family’s health, once you’ve finally gotten to a certain language level, and once you’ve spent blood, sweat, and tears in labyrinthine government offices setting up that business, institute, or NGO.

Sooner or later everyone in contexts like ours who shares the gospel faithfully will get into trouble for it. The local authorities may wink and turn a blind eye, wagering that the benefit you’re bringing to the community outweighs the cost of a few apostates. Or they may feel hoodwinked and in a supposed zeal for God kick out these “corrupters of the faithful.” The strange thing is that every prayer made for locals to come to faith and churches to be planted pushes workers like us closer to that day when our public identity is destroyed and a new narrative takes its place – a day closer to the reckoning of answered prayers. They were missionaries all along! If God answers our prayers, then this reckoning is, frankly, unavoidable.

As for my family, we’ve decided that if we indeed get kicked out someday, that will be God signalling us that it’s time to get a lot louder and lot more public in our proclamation of the gospel. Instead of being Christian professionals by day and missionary-church planters in the shadows, we’ll seize the chance to work openly among the diaspora and make YouTube videos in our target language entitled, “Here’s the message so dangerous your government kicked us out for sharing it.” As Nik Ripken helpfully points out, the goal of persecution is to stop the proclamation of the message. So, that means an appropriate response to persecution means a ramping up of the proclamation, not a quieting down.

If you asked us today if we could handle another transition, we would honestly have to say no. We have worked so hard to try and get traction in our new city over the past couple years and are just now seeing some (hopefully) promising developments. Yet we live at the mercy of our king. If it is his good pleasure to see us kicked out for sharing the gospel with the “wrong” person, then so be it. His plans will, in the end, lead to greater beauty and life. In the meantime they may feel like death. And those who have been kicked out and placed on blacklists testify to it very much being a kind of death.

Let’s not stop praying for breakthrough, even if it leads to a reckoning and the destruction of our laboriously-crafted identities. Let it all fall apart – if only we have the joy of seeing those from our people group with us in eternity.

Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash

Roadmap Types and Compass Types

A number of years ago I was asked to crystallize the church planting vision and distinctives of our church’s elder team, and to build upon it. They wanted me to put these things into a written form that would bring some definition and guidance to what was emerging as a new international church planting network.

I remember reviewing one of the drafts of this project with the elder team. While the feedback was mostly encouraging, there was one piece that at the time I found confusing.

“I just don’t see a plan here,” said one elder.

Now, I had defined key terms, spelled out our distinctives, established the principles of our strategy, set some goals, and provided several pages of content covering what it meant for someone to be trained, sent, and supported within this network. So I was perplexed at what exactly it meant that one of our sharpest elders – a brother at the time working in management in the corporate world – couldn’t see a plan. We scheduled a follow up meeting together so that I could better understand what he meant.

Somewhere in the course of our meeting I came to clarity on a point that has served me ever since. Different personalities have different understandings of what that little word, plan, means. I illustrated the difference between myself and my fellow elder like this. He was a roadmap type, and I was a compass type. He was looking for detailed, step-by-step directions and definition to this church planting strategy. I had provided the vision, the distinctives, and the strategic principles, and simply hadn’t aware that anything else was necessary.

Compass types like me are happy to know where “North” is, and to navigate each situation according to the framework of theology and principles they’re committed to. But roadmap types, while recognizing the goodness of vision, principles, and theological frameworks, feel as if they’ve been given no clear leadership about what to do come Monday morning. If compass types are leading roadmap types, the roadmap types are often frustrated by the lack of practical detail. If roadmap guys are leading compass types, the compass types often feel micromanaged. When neither are aware of these different orientations toward planning, they are usually headed for a collision, often under the guise of other issues that might exist. I continue to experience the reality of these differences as I work with colleagues who are wired to be roadmap planners.

The good news is that both orientations are good and needed. The compass types can keep us from losing the forest for the trees and they excel in flexibility and adaptability – while all still tied to solid conviction. The roadmap types keep us rooted in the practical daily realities of what we actually need to do next. They are great at thinking through next steps and in providing liberating checklists that can melt away organizational fog. And they are often better at crystallizing actual methods and plans. I still don’t have a discipleship plan to give a new missionary if they request one. I prefer to weigh each new believer’s situation and to make a plan on the spot. But I have colleagues who can give you plans for phase one, phase two, phase three, etc.

The roadmap types can become a little too married to their plans and strategies and confuse application for principle. The compass types can forget that to actually do the work we need to commit to a defined method. If a roadmap type is tempted to think, “My method of evangelism is the biblical method,” a compass type is tempted to think, “Method? Who needs method? Just preach the gospel.” Both are off-balance.

One of the stranger realizations we’ve had since coming to the field is to realize that large “tribes” of missionaries are characterized in part by these different orientations. Let’s call one tribe the Church Multiplication tribe and another tribe the Church Health tribe. Many organizations, including my own, are made up of members representing both tribes.

The Church Multiplication tribe is the one writing all the books on new and exciting methodologies, movements, and strategies. They gauge if someone is part of their tribe by leading with questions about strategy and methodology. They are by far the bigger tribe. The Church Health tribe is the one writing all the articles and recording the podcasts which focus on the importance of theology and the local church in missions. They gauge if someone is part of their tribe by leading with questions about the gospel, ecclesiology, and a distrust of the current most popular method out there (today it’s DMM). The Church Multiplication tribe tends to be evangelical, sometimes reformed, but not usually coming from a background which emphasizes ecclesiology. The Church Health tribe is often strongly reformed and evangelical and deeply impacted by groups like 9 Marks which labor to recover the centrality of the local church.

I find myself a man with feet in both camps. I have roots in the Church Multiplication tribe, but have been mentored and greatly helped by many in the Church Health tribe. I often find myself trying to nudge the Church Multiplication guys to give more weight to theology and the local church and stop trusting methods so much – and then trying to nudge the Church Health guys to give more weight to culture, methods, and contextualization. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll recognize these emphases. Now, these are all very important issues and conversations. I’m not downplaying the importance of the local church in missions or the importance of being thorough students of culture. I’ll take both, thank you.

But there is at least one difference that is not an issue of biblical conviction, but merely of group personality – and here is where I return to the roadmap vs. compass orientation. When these two tribes get together and discuss/argue methodology, I’m convinced that at least some of what is going on is a hidden issue of cross-cultural communication. It usually goes like this. The Church Multiplication camp is excited about a given method. The Church Health camp isn’t convinced it’s biblical. The Church Multiplication camp is a little offended at these prickly brethren playing the Bible card and push back to see if they have an alternative method to propose. The Church Health camp responds with biblical principles (compass language) – not a plan or a method (roadmap language). The discussion goes back and forth like this for a while and eventually ends with everyone feeling unsatisfied. The Church Health camp isn’t convinced that the other camp has biblical convictions and the Church Multiplication camp isn’t convinced the other side has a plan at all and assume they are merely going to reproduce traditional methods. In one sense, you could say they are speaking on different frequencies. And yet they aren’t aware of it. They are speaking past each other.

I’m convinced that learning about our own wiring and the wiring of others on this compass vs. roadmap spectrum is one practical way we can move toward healthier partnership on the field (and perhaps back home too). We can learn to speak the language of the other tribe, as it were, when we are communicating about our ministry, vision, and strategy. This can help us deal with the distrust that emerges when we don’t initially hear the other side addressing things that we find to be crucially important. When roadmap guys can tie their methods to principles and a theological framework, that will gain them a better hearing among the compass guys. When the compass guys can break down their principles into a nuts and bolts plan, that will gain them a better hearing among the roadmap guys. For example, Church Multiplication missiology quietly but deeply values the ability of a practitioner to visually portray his strategy on a napkin, a whiteboard, or on a screen. When Church Health guys scoff at this visual communication and merely stick to their thick position papers, they are missing an opportunity to communicate their convictions in different, but valid ways. Similarly, if Church Multiplication guys would write up some position papers that are very well-grounded in the Word, I think they’d be surprised at the kind of traction they’d get in different quarters.

In my story earlier, my fellow elder and I were on the same page theologically, but we had reached a misunderstanding because of a different personality-orientation toward planning. Turns out we were wired to see planning differently, to the glory of God. I needed general plans with goals, principles, and outlines. He needed plans with step-by-step procedures and detail. Our differences led to a stronger document in the end, because we were able to figure out a way forward in a context where our unity around the gospel and the essentials wasn’t in question.

Now that I’m on the mission field, our network of partners here is mostly Baptistic and reformed – everyone has Piper books on the shelf. And yet there have been some very deep rifts and hurts in the past over methodology. I think this unacknowledged difference of orientation is partially to blame. It’s not always an actual disagreement over theology and principle that divides us. It’s often differences in personality, culture, language, and politics. This is tragic. The good news is there are practical shifts that can be made in terms of language used and questions asked that can make a big difference.

Sometimes there will be real convictional differences that underlie these rifts. I’m not saying that all conflict between missionaries is simply a matter of misunderstanding one another’s wiring. But some of it is! Let’s get rid of that some. And then, if we have other believers on the field who indeed have different doctrine and convictions – then let’s pursue with them the healthy practice of theological and methodological triage.

And let’s learn to understand and value the compass types and roadmap types that the Lord has placed around us.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

A Local’s First Visit to the International Church

A local friend of mine recently visited our international church for the first time. A teacher, and a somewhat traditional man, I was curious to see what his impressions would be. After the service I asked him about it.

“I’m amazed at all of the small children here!” he said. “You don’t see any small children at the mosque.”

“Really?” I asked. “Is that not normal?”

“No, we don’t let any children under six come. But not only are families with small children here, their children are sitting quietly and listening! This is amazing.”

In response to this, I was able to share the story with my friend of Jesus encouraging the little children to be brought to him, from Matthew 19. It was likely the first time he had ever heard it. I also assured him that the small children (such as ours) definitely do not always sit quietly. But persevering parents who aren’t afraid of giving ten thousand reminders make a big difference.

He was also amazed by the diversity. Being an international church, we have members and attendees from twenty countries or so.

“I haven’t seen anywhere like this in our city before. So many people from Asia and Africa and Europe. Look at this man! I wonder where he is from?”

My friend kept on commenting in this vein, seemingly unable to stop, eyes wide at the fascinating mosaic of human skin and culture in front of him. I just smiled. The ethnic diversity of our church family is indeed a powerful witness.

“Was there anything else you noticed? Do you have any other questions?” I asked.

“Yes, your services… are they always this long? It was very long.”

I just laughed. “Yes, it’s a little long. But I’m so glad you got to be part of it.”

Little children and people from lots of different ethnicities, all worshiping Jesus together in a very long service. Not at all a bad first introduction to the local church.

Photo by Sam Balye on Unsplash

The Dreams of a People

In order to rediscover the amazing connection that Patrick made between the Gospel story and Irish life, we need to delve deeper into the consciousness of the Irish people at this singular hinge in their history.
Their consciousness – and, maybe eve more importantly, their subconscious. For in the dreams of a people, if we can read these aright, lie their most profound fears and their most exalted aspirations. We know something of Irish dreams, for we can piece together their mythology – their collective dream-story – from the oral tales of the pre-Christian period (such as the Tain) that were subsequently written down and from the artifacts uncovered by archaeologists. Since neither the tales nor the artifacts can offer us a whole mythology – the complete Irish dream cycle – we must read these materials as if they were the fragments of a great papyrus.
It would be an understatement to assert that Irish gods were not the friendliest of figures. Actually, there are few idols that we have retrieved from barrow or bog that would not give a child nightmares and an adult the willies. No smooth-skinned, well-proportioned Apollos and Aphrodites here.
Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization, p. 126

Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash

Please, Call Me Bob

Last night we were having dinner with some dear friends, one of the few families that has served here for more than a decade. They shared a story with us about the power of the title, pastor, here in this culture. In spite of being an ordained minister back in the West, learning the local language, and doing residential church planting work, many of the local believers were markedly more responsive when a visiting pastor from the outside would show up. All of the sudden, they would bring out great spiritual questions and want to sit and receive training – when they had resisted these very same things when offered in their language by a man who knew them and was actually living among them – because a real pastor was now present. My missionary friend, by doing the work of a church planter under the radar in a place where you can’t do so officially, was regularly not granted the respect given to someone who could afford to use the title of pastor or missionary openly.

“He’s been sacrificing everything for you for years! And you only show interest when the foreign pastor shows up? That’s the power of that title in this culture!” his wife said at one point.

What is going on here? Shouldn’t the one who does the labor of a pastor but can’t use the title for security purposes be granted the same level of respect as one who can use the title openly? At least part of this dynamic has to do with what is called high power distance and low power distance cultures.

Every culture has to deal with the unequal distribution of power within its own society. The difference between high power distance and low power distance cultures is how they think about what kind of power arrangement is most ideal. For those in low power cultures – like the West – we mentally and emotionally prefer to envision a culture where power is shared more equally. We don’t like authority figures to have too much more respect or power than their followers have. But those in high cultures actually value there being a big difference between how much respect and power is given to authority figures. In a low power culture, a more just society is one where everyone is treated equally. In a high culture, a more just society is where everyone is treated according to their status.

This comes out in interesting ways. Have you ever noticed how majority culture, middle-upper class Westerners have an aversion to titles? “Please, call me Bob,” a doctor might respond after you’ve just addressed him as Doctor so-and-so. However, this is not necessarily the case even in minority cultures in the West. In the US, African American and Hispanic cultures tend to put a higher value on the use of titles. Pay attention to the church signs and you’ll see what I mean.

High power cultures really value titles. They also value other signals of status, such as differentiation in dress and living standards. Framed certificates are displayed proudly in the workplace. Even in the home, titles for older siblings can often be used in place of their first name. To call an older brother (or any man) by his first name only can be taken as a grave offense. “Where’s your respect, you young whippersnapper?” The respectful maintenance and visibility of the hierarchy of power (age, class, position, etc.) is understood to be one of the cornerstones of a just and healthy society.

This is the unique situation my missionary friend found himself in, here in Central Asia. We, coming from a low power culture, deal daily with these strong dynamics of a high power culture. We live and work in a place where the use of the title missionary or pastor would actually accomplish a lot. But for security purposes, we can’t actually use these titles. And methodologically, we’re not always sure that we want to use them, given the ways these dynamics are often abused by local leaders. A local wolf in sheep’s clothing has no qualms about applying these titles and status symbols to himself, and thereby tapping into the honor the culture automatically extends to anyone who flaunts them. Domineering leadership is a real problem here, in basically every kind of authority. This gives us pause about merely taking on these authority status symbols uncritically. Yet to ignore them altogether is also not a very good option, because that often signals that we don’t actually think we have any authority at all.

Now, the Scriptures were written in high power cultures. The cultures of the ancient near east and the Greco-Roman world definitely held to the ideals of high power distance. And yet the word of God spoken into those cultures strikes an interesting posture. It both affirms the reality and goodness of authority, and the need to honor it appropriately, while also affirming the ideal of servant leadership and the equal dignity of every person (1 Pet 2:17, Eph 6:1, 1 Tim 5:17, Luke 22:26, 1 Pet 3:7). Going further, a common theme in books such as Luke and James is “the great reversal” where those the world does not honor are the ones who end up most honored by God: children, the poor, gentiles, and sinners (Luke 13:30, Matt 19:14, James 1:9-10, 1 Cor 1:26).

So, what are we to do when navigating these differences between low and high power cultures? We need to be able to study the whole counsel of the word on this topic, then study our own personal culture, and finally, study the different cultures we are interacting with.

We need to have a practical theology of power and authority. Again, the Bible affirms that authority is established by God (family, government, church, etc.) and therefore it is good and not to be rejected (Rom 13:1). However, our fallenness means that all authority here tends to be warped by sin (Gen 3:16, Ezekiel 34). Power in this age needs to be redeemed and transformed – but cannot discarded while living in the real world as God created it. What does redeemed and transformed authority look like? Jesus and the Apostles model this for us (Luke 22:27). Now, in the local church, the priesthood of all believers is to be celebrated, as is the special role of leaders within the body (1 Pet 2:9, Eph 4:11). Those with natural power are to rejoice in how the gospel makes them lowly. And those without natural power are to rejoice in how the gospel lifts them up (James 1:9-10). There are times when the use of titles is inappropriate, according to Jesus (Matt 23:1-12). And there are times when the use of titles can be done for the sake of godly respect (Mark 3:14). Wisdom, love, and context make all the difference here.

We also need to know our own cultural bent. If you are a Westerner reading this, it’s helpful to realize that we live in a culture that has serious issues with the very idea of power and authority itself. Western culture is philosophically bent towards living in a fantasy where power differences don’t have to exist. Yes, this even affects missionaries. Some have experimented with this fantasy in the house churches they plant overseas, trying to get rid of the role of a teacher or preacher altogether. However, being fantasy and not reality, this never works for the long term. Sooner or later leaders, teachers, and preachers always emerge. We might cringe when our local friends use respectful titles for us, but why is that? Where does that cringe originate? The Bible or some kind of cultural reaction we’ve inherited and continue to propagate? We need to take an honest look at our own power distance preferences and make sure we can pinpoint what is biblical and what is personal.

Studying the local culture’s power distance preference is also crucial. How do they envision the ideal distribution of power in society? And why? What of this needs to be redeemed and what needs to be rejected? In our local culture, I am thrilled that our local believers are trained from their youth to respect the elderly and to use respectful titles for them. This good cultural value needs to kept and deepened via gospel motivation. But the prideful arrogance that so often comes once a title like pastor has been bestowed – and the idea that this title is some kind of status for life that can be genetically passed onto children – that practice needs to be done away with among the new community of faith.

As with so many of these spectrums of culture, there are going to be cliffs on either side, expressions of a low power preference and those of a high power preference that clash with biblical principles. If you are flirting with the idea of getting rid of teachers in the local church, you’ve gone too far – just as you are if you believe that the pastor controls the decisions of the members of his church. Yet there’s going to be a range of expressions in the middle that are faithful to scripture, yet still feel very different from one another. It’s just not necessary that a church in Kentucky give a visiting speaker a special scarf in a public ceremony (complete with photos) after his sermon. But for Nepalese churches, this is highly honorable in the sight of all. When in Kentucky, privately give brother “Bob” an envelope containing an honorarium as a thank you, and that will do just fine.

Practically, it will be helpful for high power distance believers to wrestle with ways they can publicly honor the “least of these.” This will be radically counter-cultural. Just as it will be helpful for low power distance cultures to think about if there are particular ways they need to give “double honor” to the leaders and authority figures among them, as so much of the popular culture is raging against this – and even the leaders themselves might squirm when honored!

Fellow missionaries and anyone involved in ministry, let’s be sure we are making these decisions with scripture-informed intentionality, and not merely out of cultural default. This will take some work. But it will be work that will result in a community that leverages power differentials in a compelling and other-worldly way. In this world reeling from the abuses of the power and the abusive reactions to the abuses of power, this kind of redemption of power distances is desperately needed.

Photo by Mariah Solomon on Unsplash

*For more on high and low power distance cultures, see F. Scott Moreau’s Effective Intercultural Communication

Relativism, Silver Bullets, and How to Kill Vampires

The following is an excerpt from an article I’ve been working on regarding missionary methodology.

“A wrong orientation toward missionary methods is one of the quiet cancers eating away at the health of the evangelical missions world. For the purposes of this article, we will distinguish between two errant camps demonstrating an incorrect orientation. These are the methodological relativists and the silver-bullet-true-believers. And sometimes missionaries jump from one camp to the other, depending on how hard a given term has been.

The relativists, for their part, have seized upon a real cross-cultural dynamic and have taken it to the extreme. They have found that certain principles can be applied in different places in wildly divergent, even contradictory forms, while still communicating that same principle or meaning. Hence the universal idea of respectful greetings means one kisses another man’s wife in France while not acknowledging the presence of another man’s wife in a country like Afghanistan. Radically different forms communicate the same meaning in different cultures, while other times the same forms can communicate radically different meanings from one place to another.

The relativists apply this idea across the board, believing that all or most forms and terms are ultimately relative, can be redeemed, and in the process filled with biblical meaning. This error is what Insider Movement advocates are flirting with as they advocate for Messianic Muslims, calling Mohammad a prophet, and the like. It is what one of the patron saints of missiology, Roland Allen, himself flirted with a hundred years ago as he wrote of finding “The Christ within Hinduism.” It is the error informing the Bible college missions major who floats replacing water baptism with an equivalent ceremony communicating burial and resurrection due to the negative reaction to water baptism in the Islamic world.

What this camp misses is that method always has a bearing on meaning, whether that bearing be small or large. This is true at least because methods and forms don’t emerge in a vacuum, but rather emerge in a historical and cultural time-slice with those stubborn clinging barnacles of previous and contemporary meaning. Nevertheless, the philosophical aspects to this way of thinking about the fluidity of forms and meaning are very attractive to intellectually-oriented cross-cultural workers who are frustrated by the slow growth of their work. This camp ends up being broader than scripture in the applications and methods of their work.

The camp of the silver-bullet-true believers falls into a different error. The true believers come to feel that there is only one faithful or effective method for a given context. They latch onto a method (often one proven more-or-less effective elsewhere) and vigorously seek to apply that method in their ministry. Sometimes these have been good methods that were developed in contextual conversation with a specific place and culture. But the true believer, whether the developer of that method or a proselyte, at some point decides it should go global.

Whether it’s oral bible-storying, T4T, CPM, DMM, Any3, 4 Fields, POP, the Camel Method, DBS, or myriad other methodologies, these practitioners can rival any cage-stage Calvinist in their devotion to their newfound creed. The practical plans and positive outcomes that many methods promise prove to be very attractive to workers who long to see the gospel spread quickly in their resistant context. Sometimes this camp is made up of those who are more pragmatically wired, but not always. Many members of this camp are committed to getting their methods from scripture. The problem is that they latch onto one portion of scripture, whether descriptive or prescriptive, and elevate it as the biblical model. They fail to balance it with the rest of the examples and commands of scripture. Unlike the relativists, the true believers end up being narrower than scripture in the applications and methods of their work.

What is to be done to remedy a missions world prone to relativism or silver bullets? Alas, many missionaries on the field are practicing their craft in ways that are broader or narrower than scripture would permit – and this is causing real damage. Instead, the remedy demands that missionaries have a clear understanding of biblical principles and a firm grip on the range of faithful applications of those principles.

To illustrate, let’s return to the vampire lore. Missionaries are like a group of villagers arguing about how to kill vampires in light of a spate of recent attacks. One group argues that yes, the old tomes teach that vampires can be killed by a silver knife, a stake, or a bullet… and yet, whatever is a metal weapon “in essence” should also be equally valid – at the end of the day metal is metal and weapons are weapons and silver shouldn’t have any greater effect than iron or steel. That silver stuff is probably just encrusted tradition, but now we are enlightened enough to truly grasp the metaphorical essence of what those texts were really getting at. So, let’s be sure to hit them with the big guns that were so good at taking out that human army from that other kingdom.

The other group of villagers argues that the earliest tomes deal mostly with the use of silver knives. Silver knives were used in the first generation that fought vampires and proved to be remarkably effective. To deviate from this original path is to risk too much and to fail to unleash the true promise of a vampire-slaying movement like was seen in the days of old. And after all, silver knives are much more reproducible than other options.

No doubt these villagers argue back and forth with case studies, journal publications, and moving personal anecdotes. What is needed to clear up this mess is a gnarled old village guard willing to step into the fray and proclaim through his missing teeth, “The idea is silver weapons, you fools!” Not broadly weapons “in essence”, and not just silver knives, but silver weapons. Make it too broad and you risk losing all effectiveness (and getting turned into a vampire yourself). Make it too narrow and you unnecessarily limit your effective options. After all, who wants to only have a silver knife when you could also have a revolver full of silver rounds in the chamber? These villagers need to recognize the key principle (silver) in the appropriate scope of its application (weapons that can pierce the heart).

Missionaries, like our vampire-besought villagers, should desire to be armed with the right kind of spiritual weapons and to be competent in and carrying as many of them as possible, skillfully applying them to particular situations.”

For more on this topic, see Seven Pitfalls and Seven Questions Toward Healthier Methodology.

Photo by Jay Rembert on Unsplash