Making Observations, Not Laws

“All Chinese restaurants here are fronts for prostitution.” This statement was communicated to us when we were brand new on the field. Over time we learned that it was a bit overstated. Yes, some of the Chinese restaurants were fronts for prostitution, but not all. From asking various locals we were able to learn about certain restaurants where we could enjoy some delicious Asian cuisine without indirectly supporting prostitution – and where we would also not be in danger of being perceived by locals as ourselves being customers of the wrong sort. Turns out that even in our corner of Central Asia there were Chinese small business owners who were just here to make a living by opening a restaurant (some of whom in other cities were rumored to be missionaries themselves, part of the Back to Jerusalem movement).

What had been a valid observation had become a law of cultural interpretation. “Chinese restaurants here tend to be fronts for prostitution” had become “All Chinese restaurants here are fronts, therefore never eat at one.” For us, this served as one example of a common trend among those doing cross-cultural ministry – the trend of making laws when we should instead be making theories and observations.

It’s understandable. When we enter a new context we are eager to learn the culture, the rules, the way things are, and the way we need to act. Important things are at stake, like our sanity and our testimony. We ourselves are adrift in a sea of uncertainty, navigating a foreign culture and context, desperate for something solid to hold onto, eager to make sense of this new world. So we get a piece of intel from our teammates or from a local and we absolutize it. From this day forward, I will honor the laws that all locals have lice, no locals can think abstractly, no locals are comfortable worshiping in a public church setting, etc., etc.

But there are several problems with this way of forming these kinds of laws and absolutes. The first is that every culture is diverse. Just because one local describes his people in a certain way does not mean that is an accurate representation of every demographic in the culture. My wife was once invited to play a role in a local TV commercial for a rice company. Most of our city friends said not to think twice about it, but to take it as a fun opportunity. But when we checked with one of our other believing friends from a more conservative Islamic and tribal background, he told us not to do it. “We would never ever let our women be filmed like that,” he said. “Too much opportunity for them to be objectified by others. It’s not honorable.” We decided to be cautious and to pass on the offer. We were glad after seeing the commercial as they portrayed the foreign women who later took the role as somewhat of a buffoon.

Another problem with making laws instead of interpretations has to do with our own limited understanding of our new context. Actually understanding what certain things really mean in a new culture is a marathon effort, not a sprint. We do not always have the lenses we need to see things clearly and without distortion. Once we have spent some years marinating in the values and worldview of our new culture, we will be in a better place to connect the dots. “Try not to make any judgments in your first year on the field” is a wise piece of advice I recall my mother saying. If we’re not careful, one generation of missionaries makes hasty judgments which get passed on as laws to the next generation of missionaries and then on to the next. While some things are blatantly obvious (drunkenness and wife-beating are wrong and to be immediately condemned), others are illuminated in a better light over time (he’s making sure not to touch your hand when he gives you the change, not because he thinks women are dirty, but because he wants to protect your chaste reputation in the community).

Finally, culture is not a static thing. It is living and moving, like a cloud formation that seems stable, only to have shifted a great deal the next time you glance back up at the sky. The valid “rules” a few years ago may have shifted by the time we arrive on the field – or when we come back again after a season away. They may continue to shift. The key is to have a firm grasp on our biblical principles and their range of expressions and then to have a curious and keen eye toward studying the culture. Living in a non-static human culture will bear on commands such as “outdo one another in showing honor,” “he must have a good reputation with outsiders,” “greet one another with a holy kiss,” and others (Rom 12:10, 1 Tim 3:7, 1 Thes 5:26). It is extremely important that I stand to my feet when a local man over forty enters a room. This is changing among the twenty and thirty-somethings, who are moving away from some of their elders’ formality. Rightly discerning our context is key – as is the right kind of stability and flexibility. I will always honor adoption, no matter if it is shameful in my adopted culture. I will not always kiss other men on the cheek without first discerning my context.

Entering a new culture (or reentering) is a wonderful time to make observations. Contrasts which will later fade are stark and vibrant. So let’s make abundant observations and theories. But let’s be cautious with making laws about the culture. They may prove to be valid trends. But turning a trend into a law ultimately results in decreasing our valid biblical options. And frankly, the work is hard enough that we should want all options on the table.

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In Praise of The Dogpile Effect

The dogpile effect. My former team gave this name to our response against territorialism. Territorialism is a common danger on the mission field where certain believing or unbelieving locals are “claimed” by a given missionary and the other foreigners are not invited into that relationship. Sometimes there are decent reasons for limiting the number of foreigners a local has speaking into their life. Too many diverse voices can cause unhelpful confusion. Somebody needs to run point. And yet most of the time it’s simple fear, insecurity, or pride that leads a cross-cultural worker to not let their teammates or trusted partners get to know their local disciple. What if they like them better than they like me? What if they give them counsel I don’t agree with? Why should I need others investing in my friend if I’m already discipling them?

Desiring to move into a better posture regarding our ministry relationships with locals, we came to instead embrace the idea of the dogpile effect. The premise is simple. A team of believers pouring into a local will be healthier and more powerful in the long run. In the presence of many counselors there is safety (Prov 11:14). Turns out there are several very important reasons to bring others into your discipleship relationships. And while I’m primarily speaking into the world of cross-cultural workers, these things apply to any believer seeking to disciple others.

Transience is the first reason to bring others in. Humans are transient beings, and missionaries even more so. While it’s true for all of us that our lives are mere vapor (James 4:14), fading much more quickly than we thought, this effect is compounded on the mission field. Missionaries may have to leave their context of service abruptly due to political developments, visa issues, health problems, brokenness, family situations back home, or sin. So many plan for forty years and due to unforeseen difficulties have to go back to their home country after four. The average long-termer in our corner of Central Asia stays for only six years. A realistic view of our own transience means we should have other mentors that our local friends can lean on when we get that dreaded phone call saying it’s suddenly time to go. Handing off discipleship relationships is easier said than done. It takes time for trust to be built. We should be bringing in others early on in the process.

My family only ended up serving three years in our previous city, never imagining that we would be called to serve elsewhere after such a brief season. Yet that’s exactly what happened. By God’s grace our local friends were already plugged into a community, a team that was able to carry on with spiritual friendship and their discipleship – even in the relationships where we had previously taken point. This brought comfort in the midst of our transition. Our friends would not be left as spiritual orphans.

Our own lopsided spiritual gifts also advocate for inviting others into our evangelistic and discipleship relationships. Every believer is given particular gifts by the Holy Spirit, but no one is given every gift (1st Cor 12). While we all have strengths, each strength comes with its accompanying weakness. We need other believers investing in our friends because our own discipleship will have some serious holes and shortcomings. Something wonderful happens when several believers invest together in a particular person – their complementary gifts work together for a more holistic and healthy mentorship than would have been possible one-on-one. The body of Christ simply does better work when the members are working together. This doesn’t change simply because we are working in a foreign context.

I will never forget a church discipline situation with a Central Asian friend where I had used every tool and argument that I knew of to plead with my friend to repent. In the end it was insufficient. Yet breakthrough unexpectedly came through a conversation with an East Asian brother who was able to apply a surprising passage of scripture to the situation in a masterful way I never would have. His gifting in wisdom made all the difference. My friend repented and was restored.

Transience and giftedness argue for communal ministry relationships. Yet I would be amiss if I did not also mention one more aspect: beauty. There is a particular compelling beauty that comes about through a community of believers on mission together. This beauty results in the world knowing that we are Jesus’ disciples as our love for one another is displayed (John 13:35). It results in the world believing that the Father has sent the Son as our unity shines (John 11:21). An isolated disciple maker is simply not as spiritually compelling as a dogpile of believers doing the work together. These are the basic dynamics of the kingdom, how it grows and blossoms.We may not think of a dogpile as a particularly beautiful thing, but this kind most certainly is.

What does a compelling communal witness look like? It can be the simplest relationships on display. One friend came to faith in part because he witnessed the dynamics of our marriage – and we were newlyweds at the time, very much figuring things out. Another friend believed the gospel after coming to know the members our small church plant in communal settings. The beauty of believers interacting together and on display is beautiful and powerful – even to raise the spiritually dead.

Territorialism is a constant temptation for disciple makers. My encouragement is that we fight our fears, insecurities, and pride, instead choosing to invite other believers into our evangelistic and discipleship relationships. Because we are transient. Because we need one another’s gifts. Because of beauty.

Let’s embrace the dogpile effect. We won’t regret having done so.

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The Saga of Plastic Jesus

A photo I stealthily took of plastic Jesus, when Hama wasn’t looking

Right after Sharon’s speech returned, one of Hama’s nephews was given an Operation Christmas Child box by an NGO that was passing them out. Along with school supplies the box also contained some scripture portions and a plastic Jesus who would quote verses when you squeezed his hand. “I am the bread of life” was one of the phrases he would cheerfully intone in a Christian-radio American accent.

Hama and his wife were thrilled and swiftly commandeered action figure Jesus from their nephew and put it up on their wall. They were so excited to show it to me. For my part, I groaned inwardly as soon as I saw it. It’s remarkable how many of the regrettable parts of consumer Christianity still make it to frontier settings overseas. And yet, by the grace of God, I have learned they can sometimes be appreciated in a wholesome way by our Central Asian friends, free as they are from much of the attending baggage.

Plastic Jesus went up on Hama’s wall, surrounded on all sides by Islamic paraphernalia. I remember that on the opposite wall there was a rather frightening picture of Medina, with a dark, brooding, red sky. The two stood facing each other for the next couple months, the time when Hama wanted to follow Jesus, but was still held back by his fear. It was a showdown, a face-off oddly representative of the real spiritual forces at play. For me it also represented the way Hama and I had been talking. I had a sense the whole time that I should stay away from polemics and attacking his native religion, Islam. I felt that if Jesus was held up as beautiful and powerful that everything else would fade.

The inspirational/terrifying Medina poster which hung directly opposite to plastic Jesus for a season

Indeed, that’s how it happened for Hama. Like the yeast that’s inserted into the lump of dough or the mustard seed into the garden, Jesus went into the midst of Hama’s life (and living room) and changed everything from the inside out. As Hama and his wife eventually walked away from Islam, the different Islamic pictures and amulets on their walls also came down. Only plastic Jesus remained. I thought we might need to have some kind of talk about not venerating images, but Hama beat me to it by giving away plastic Jesus to a mover who was fascinated by it. Hama’s wife was a bit upset that he had given it away, but for my part I was relieved.

Thus ended the saga of plastic Jesus, an unexpected parable of what the real Jesus was doing in the heart of my friend. How shall we apply this strange tale? First, be amazed at the creativity of the Holy Spirit. He can truly use anything to draw those he is saving. Second, if you are ever packing shoe boxes for distribution among children overseas, I would ask you kindly to not include Jesus action figures. God can use anything – but seriously, just don’t do it.

Flip Flops: Mine or Ours?

I had a favorite pair of flip flops that I took along to the Middle East. Being a college student at the time, and one who had grown up in an island-type culture, I had indulged on an expensive American pair of preppy leather flip flops. One summer day I wore them to a house church, depositing them outside the door with all the other shoes and sandals. After the gathering was finished I was dismayed to find that my favorite flip flops had disappeared. Apparently someone had mistaken them for their own – but no, footwear like that wasn’t available in this country, so no one could confuse them for their own. Had someone stolen them? And at a church meeting no less!

A few weeks later a local believer came to our house. And lo! He was wearing my flip flops. As it registered that he was the thief, I sat pondering how and if to bring up this awkward topic. Yet something was strange about his bearing. He wasn’t acting guilty or conscious at all of his infringement upon my personal property. There he was, wearing them right in front of me. I let it slide until I could figure out what was going on and how I should navigate this situation. Somehow I eventually came to realize that my friend wasn’t showing any signs of remorse because he hadn’t even committed a mistake, let alone a theft, according to his culture. Flip flops and sandals were simply considered communal property.

To have special ownership over a pair of sandals was utterly foreign to my host Middle Eastern culture. Shoes, yes, but sandals? Everyone knows that sandals belong to everyone. You wear them to to enter the squatty-potty, to walk to the corner store, to go out on the dusty roof. No one thinks twice about utilizing them however is needed. Once I realized this part of the culture I strategically wore a different pair of sandals to the next house church meeting. I managed to reclaim my cherished flip flops with a subtle switch during a trip to the bathroom. My friend never seemed to notice that I had successfully reclaimed them. Yet given the extent that I had been bothered by the loss of these flip flops, it felt like a hollow victory. As I recall, the leather later shrunk and curled under the merciless Middle-Eastern sun.

Cultures vary in their understanding of communal property. Certain items or spaces are understood as belonging not to individuals, but to the community. In Melanesia, grassy lawns were viewed this way. It was not uncommon to emerge from a missionary’s house to see clusters of locals sitting and enjoying the front yard. And yet when my friends and I tried to hike different mountains, we kept getting in trouble for not first consulting the “owners” of the mountain. Lawns belong to the community, mountains are private property. Got it.

Every culture has communal property, those things which are simply understood by insiders as justly being available to all. We even have this in the West in spite of our heavier emphasis on private property. Just drop a group of American tourists in a foreign context with no public restrooms and see what happens. And yet this is another area of culture that tends to go unspoken. It is caught rather than taught. One grows up and learns by osmosis what is private and what is communal. As such this area poses a real danger for culture stress.

Frustration with a foreign culture often builds slowly, akin to death by a thousand paper cuts. I think that the “trespassing” of our private property is one area particularly irksome to us Westerners. Whether it’s time, space, or belongings (or hair or photos?), we tend to have a harder time overlooking the oft-unintentional violations of what we have learned belongs to us. We need to have eyes that are open and looking for these differences so that we are better prepared to overlook them in love when they do occur. Count on it, when crossing cultures we will have opportunity to practice not counting anything that belongs to us as actually our own (Acts 4:32). Not that the scriptures are against private property at all – on the contrary, it is assumed to be part of the world God has created. But when necessary for the sake of the gospel and the community of believers, these private rights are surrendered for the sake of love.

One of the best examples I have seen of this came from an older Korean couple who worked among a mountain-top tribe in Melanesia. Knowing that the tribe would understood their tools as belonging to the community and not to themselves alone, they decided to proactively own this fact, rather than fighting it as many other outsiders do. When they moved into the tribe, they appropriately asked that the villagers build their first jungle house for them. In return, they publicly announced at their welcome ceremony that their tools were for the use of the whole village, as needed. So when a tool was inevitably stolen later, they gathered the village leadership and told them that the village tools had been taken. The tribe was accordingly alarmed and put together a search party which soon hunted down the culprit and punished him appropriately. The tool was returned and all was well.

Had this Korean couple not contextualized their personal belongings in this way, the village may well have justified the theft because of the vast wealth disparity still present between the average villager and the modest missionaries. In a subsistence culture where survival depends on sharing tools, these missionaries appropriately put away their own culture’s understanding of personal property and put on their host culture’s. They have lived in peace in that remote tribe for many years now.

What is your culture’s understanding of communal vs. private property? Every culture will have both, but the particular arrangements tend to vary. Are we preparing our hearts to respond lovingly when our understanding of private property is violated in a cultural sense? Do we know what private property means in our host cultures so that we can still call theft theft in the biblical sense? These are not simple questions. Yet they are the meat-and-potatoes of living with a good testimony in another culture.

Some days we will find ourselves deeply annoyed that something of ours has been treated as communal property. But it would tragic to lose our witness among our focus people group because we clung too tightly to our own culture’s property preferences. Let us rather be known as those who cheerfully give up our possessions for the sake of others. In this way we can point to him who though rich, became poor for our sake (2 Cor 8:9).

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Two Vital Pieces of Clarity for Church Planting

Every missionary church planter should have biblical clarity on minimum church vs. mature church. By minimum church, I am referring to what has been called the ecclesiological minimum, that point at which a gathering has the bare essentials required to be called a church in the biblical sense. A lot could be added, but take anything away and it is no longer a church. By mature church, I’m referring to a church that has grown into a full and healthy expression of a covenant community. It is mature, not in the sense that it has no room for growth, but in that it has the real presence of all the biblical characteristics of a healthy church.

Why is it important to understand minimum church? The role of a church planter is to start new churches. This demands the ability to discern when a bible study, outreach group, or potential church has arrived at the point whereby it can biblically be called an actual church. Is a church merely two or three unbelievers gathered in Jesus’ name? Is it a couple Christian friends going fishing? Is it a group of college students who meet regularly for worship and prayer sessions? No, but the does Bible speak to this threshold where a group becomes a fledgling church. Every missionary church planter needs to wrestle with the sum of the biblical teaching on this question and arrive at a point of convictional clarity. And teams need to share a common understanding and use the language of church accordingly.

Call it what it is – a house group, a potential church, a bible study – but don’t call it a church until it actually is one. Too often the term church is used in a careless and undefined way by missionaries who themselves don’t have clarity on this point. Many are merely reacting to bad experiences with the Western church or experimenting with theories floated in missiology. Others have simply never been trained or challenged to wrestle with the scriptures over these questions. On the other hand, other missionaries with a robust ecclesiology sometimes aren’t ready to call something a church that is actually a church, albeit an immature one. They have assumed that a mature church is the minimum required to actually be a church. In this they have gone beyond the scriptures and might not make the progress they could have otherwise. They are in a sense ignorant of the sapling for love of the tree.

Yet missionary church planters desperately need clarity on mature church. Many church plants overseas fail because the minimum is assumed to be sufficient for a strong movement. And yet it is not. Mature churches last. Immature churches often die or go mutant. Given the sum of the scriptures, what are all of the characteristics of a mature church? Can we spell them out and can we compare and contrast them with the key characteristics of a minimum church? Do we have enough clarity on this to not only write a paper, but also to write it out on a napkin or to speak freely and spontaneously on this topic with a local leader in training? If not, we likely have some work to do in the pursuit of clarity. Clarity on the nature of the church will only serve us in our work. It is not legalistic, Western, nor paternalistic to ask that all of our missionary church planters have a biblical understanding of the church’s infancy and its adulthood. That understanding will instead put missionaries in the best position to actually plant biblical contextualized churches. They will know what they are looking at and they will know what they are aiming for.

The Biblical data on church is the same, but there are diverse ways it can be summarized in a healthy way. Everyone will have to make choices about which characteristics and categories get put under this umbrella term or that category, or how many characteristics you use in your summary of the biblical data. So let’s none of us pretend that all of our summaries have to look exactly the same. But we are dealing with the same biblical data. We need to make sure each summary faithfully accounts for all of it. There are many ways to skin a cat, as they say, but we are still working with the same thing – a cat skin. If yours comes out looking like anything else, there’s probably something wrong.

My organization uses twelve characteristics to describe a healthy church (See here for further definition, p. 61). They are:

Worship
Fellowship
Leadership
Membership
Discipleship
Giving
Evangelism
Teaching and Preaching
Accountability and Discipline
Mission
Ordinances
Prayer

By summarizing the Bible’s teaching on church into these twelve categories, we have a succinct yet robust way to talk about a mature church. My team regularly reviews this material and has come up with a memory tool so that we can each reproduce these twelve characteristics on the spot (5 ‘ships GET A MOP). It’s one thing to know how to find the characteristics in some notes somewhere. It’s another thing (especially in an oral culture) to be able to have them stored in your mind and ready to be shared at a moment’s notice. Our memory tool is strange enough to be memorable (a principle that also works for new vocab! Absurdity = retention).

So that is our summary of a mature church. To keep things simple, we’ve been working with these same characteristics to distinguish the threshold of minimum church. Here’s where I currently draw that line:

Minimum church – numbers 1-6 can be present and a group not yet be a church in the biblical sense. The key addition of number 7 makes this minimum church.

Prayer
Preaching and Teaching
Evangelism
Discipleship
Fellowship
Worship
Ordinances (the point of transition to becoming a church, including self and covenant identity)

Mature church – when these five elements are present and added to the previous seven, a church can be considered mature. Notice the need for greater organization and structure required here.

Membership
Leadership
Accountability and Discipline
Giving
Mission

This kind of clarity helps us immensely as we think about the task of church planting. When does a church become a church? What constitutes the transition point? What do we work on developing next once we have a baby church on our hands? What is our vision of a mature church in all of its beauty? How do I summarize the wealth of biblical content on church in a way that is faithful but reproducible? These tools have been helpful for my team in answering these questions.

This post is meant to be a mere summary of this topic, the cliffnotes as it were of a potentially very thick volume. An ecclesiology that is both robustly biblical and practical is a major area of needed focus in contemporary missions. But for today, my main claim is that every missionary church planter needs a clear and biblical view of minimum church vs. mature church.

If we can all return to the scriptures to seek greater clarity and conviction on these points, many more of the churches planted overseas will not only last but will also multiply in a healthy way. It is my prayer that both will indeed occur to a greater extent.

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We Need A Whole New Language

We had been teaching through the sermon on the mount and the portion on oaths had fallen to me. It was not necessarily the text I would have chosen to focus on in that busy season of our fledgling church plant. But we had committed to teach through Matthew, believing that every part is God-breathed, even the parts that felt less relevant. So I studied Matthew 5:33-37 as best I could and labored to explain it and apply it in the local language. After the meeting finished I approached *Frank and *Patti, two local new believers.

“Was everything clear? Any questions?” I asked. I wasn’t really expecting a lot of response.

Both stood with furrowed brows.

“Yes, very clear… But if this is true, then we need a whole new language,” Frank responded.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Patti chimed in, “It’s impossible to speak our language without starting every other sentence with an oath. We need to learn a whole new way to speak! We knew that following Jesus would mean change, but this is going to be really hard!”

“This was a very surprising and important part of the Bible for us to learn about. Thank you,” Frank said.

If my local friends were surprised at this part of Jesus’ teaching, I for my part was surprised by their response. Didn’t see that one coming, I thought to myself, and not for the last time. We later debriefed with our teammates about this conversation.

It was true. How could we have missed it? The local language was absolutely chock-full of oaths. Coming from a culture and language where oaths are mostly archaic, we hadn’t really noticed them, even as we ourselves learned to start our sentences with some of them, mimicking the cadence of our local friends’ speech.

By God. By the sacrifice. By the Qur’an. By my grandmother’s grave. By both of my eyes. By the top of my head. By my honor. As we reflected we realized just how hard it was to make a serious statement in the local language without prefacing it with an oath. This passage from Matthew may have been very practical after all.

We were at that point just beginning to learn that the Central Asian culture where we serve is riddled with deceit and duplicity. This is the real downside to an honor-based culture. Everyone is lying all the time to save face. This is likely where the oaths came in, trying to create a more reliable kind of statement where the hearer can be assured that the speaker isn’t just lying to save face. But it didn’t really solve the problem. Like some strange cousin to the Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception, it just punted the problem up one level. How does it help you believe in Jesus’ sinlessness to claim that Mary was born sinless also? What about her parents? How does it help you believe your friend who would normally lie to you just because this time he used an oath? Wouldn’t a liar just keep lying, even if using an oath?

We began trying to purge the local oaths we had learned out of our speech and it did prove remarkably difficult. We held on to using By the Truth, feeling like we had some precedence to lean on by Jesus’ usage of Truly, truly, I say to you.

Going deeper in our understanding of the local culture helped us better understand the first-century culture Jesus was rebuking. To cultures and languages that try to maintain two levels of speech, normal and oath-backed, Jesus says, “Enough! Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” No more tolerating certain lies and trying to convince others to believe you by linking your statement to something holy or something you foolishly think you have power over. In the kingdom of God, followers of Jesus will be known for honest character and honest speech such that oaths are now no longer needed.

It may be the distant echoes of this teaching that lead Muslims to still say about the local ethnic Christians and about Westerners, “They are honest people compared to us.” Islamic teaching advocates for deceit in the cause of good. This, of course, has been like pouring gasoline on the dumpster fire of human deceitfulness. Lying and duplicity have in time become some of the deepest besetting sins of the Middle East and Central Asia. This makes me truly appreciate the local translation of Romans 12:9 – “Let love be without two-faced-ness.”

Frank and Patti were partially right. In one sense, they would need a whole new language. But not in the religious sense where some human tongue is elevated as more holy than another. No, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, or English are not superior spiritual languages, regardless of the bad precedent set by Christianity and Islam. Rather, Frank and Patti’s fallen language, not unlike their fallen bodies, was now under new ownership. Their language was to be redeemed and made part of the eternal Revelation 7:9 choir. That would mean purging some elements, like oaths, and the addition of many others, such as new forms of theology, thanksgiving, and worship.

Jesus is transforming Frank and Patti’s language from the inside-out. It will be remarkable to see the future church there speaking the same tongue, but now transformed into a mature vessel of glory. A language remade! Now that is encouraging to think about.

*Names have been changed for security

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If You Don’t Evangelize at Home, You Won’t Overseas?

In this post I hope to offer a qualification to a good general principle. I have often heard it said that if you don’t share the gospel in your home culture, you won’t share it in a foreign culture either. There is no sanctification by aviation, it is said. I largely agree with this sentiment. Whether you live on mission at home is a very good indication of whether you will live on mission overseas or not.

However, I have also spent many years of my life living in places where it’s actually easier to share the gospel than it is in the secular West. Frankly, the Western church needs to know that it’s hard to share the gospel where they live compared to many other parts of the world. It’s not just that we all struggle with fear of man. Western culture itself has built-in societal mechanisms to shut down conversation with others about religious things. Many other cultures don’t do that to the same extent. Sure, the government won’t get you in trouble for sharing the gospel in the West. But believe it or not, it’s actually easier to share the gospel in a context where the people are hungry for it, but the government will arrest you. In the West, the government may be fine with it, but the people are prone to be offended.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Christians in the West should excuse themselves from sharing the gospel. But open admissions of difficulty are often helpful in and of themselves. They help us adequately prepare for the task at hand. Yes, it’s tough. So what do we need to do to account for the toughness?

But the fact that it is often harder in the West might also mean that some need to go overseas in order to get training in how to evangelize. Common experience dictates that trainees need to begin with tasks that are more attainable as they work their way up to more difficult tasks. This provides them an opportunity to gain experience and confidence as they progress toward greater challenges. In this vein we start kids off with pool noodles as they work their way toward swimming on their own and we train teenagers to drive in parking lots or country roads before they get on the highway.

For some in the category of trainee, newer disciple, or even veteran believer who has never shared the gospel regularly, dropping them into a foreign context just might be the most helpful thing for their growth in evangelism.

Some foreign cultures are very comfortable speaking openly about religious things. In our corner of Central Asia, the first things many want to know about are our views on Trump and our views on Islam. It’s as if the Western rule of “no politics or religion in small talk” has been flipped on its head. This makes our overseas context a wonderful place to practice and grow as an evangelist. When we or our visitors are spending time with locals, there tend to be many softballs thrown inviting a gospel presentation and lots of room to make mistakes. I know that our setting is not unique in this regard.

Foreign cultures can also be helpful training grounds for evangelism because we are often freer from the fear of man when speaking through linguistic and cultural barriers. In our home culture we feel how awkward a certain direct question about sin or death might be. In another culture, we initially don’t feel this. We instead feel greater freedom to be as blunt as we should be, blissfully ignorant as we are of how awkward that kind of a question was. This can be helpful as we come to see the good fruit that can come from direct gospel conversation, regardless of the awkwardness or strangeness of it. Greater gospel sharing leads to both greater willingness to do the awkward thing and a greater ability to make gospel conversations natural.

A particular intentionality toward spiritual things also tends to accompany us when we are in a foreign context. Whether it’s a one-week trip or a one-year term, the constant strangeness of our surroundings reminds us of the purpose of our presence in said foreign land. We are here to share the gospel. We have a limited time to do it. This kind of intentionality naturally leads towards more actual gospel proclamation. We think about it more. We pray about it more. So we share more. In our home cultures we can be in danger of a certain spiritual forgetfulness. Because everything feels so familiar we can forget that we ourselves are spiritual strangers and sojourners, placed here for a particular mission.

If you don’t share the gospel at home, you won’t share it overseas. This is a trustworthy statement. At the same time, some may need to go overseas in order to learn the confidence, craft, and intentionality required to share the gospel regularly back at home. This argues in favor of short term and mid term mission assignments to locations where this kind of growth can take place. Not sure how this kind of a trip can take place? Well, myself and hundreds of other missionaries would be overjoyed to help your church find the right kind of setting for a short-term trip that helps your people grow in evangelism (once the post-pandemic world returns to greater normalcy in travel, that is).

Helping timid evangelists grow in their craft and confidence may not seem to make a huge impact on the work of long term missionaries. But it would be a worthwhile investment in the saints of partner churches nonetheless. We can’t always trace the Spirit’s plans. It may be that a timid believer finds his evangelistic gifting while on a short term trip overseas. Coming back home, he is then helped to live a more faithful evangelistic lifestyle. A coworker he then leads to faith ends up overseas long-term himself, leading to breakthrough in an unreached people group. Stranger things have happened in the advance of the kingdom.

Let us strive to share the gospel faithfully no matter where we live. “Woe to me if I do not share the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16). Yet let us also keep our eyes open to those places that can be strategic training grounds for Timothy-types who might need a season overseas as solid preparation for living faithfully back home.

A Snapshot of the Identity Crisis Within Islam

Can Islam be true Islam without a Caliphate? That is the question that has been simmering within the Islamic mind for one hundred years. The final Ottoman caliph was deposed during secular reforms after World War I. Ever since then there has been no caliphate, Islam’s equivalent of theocratic empire.

For a parallel Christians might be more familiar with, consider the similar question that Judaism faced after the destruction of the first and second Jerusalem temples. How can the faith live on when so much of it assumed the existence of a particular structure? With that structure gone, can the faith reinvent itself and reinterpret commands that seem impossible without that sacred structure?

After the destruction of the first temple in 586 BC, Judaism was able to eventually return from exile and rebuild. Yet it changed nonetheless, developing the synagogue system and coming to a deeper understanding of the kingdom of God as a universal one. God’s throne is revealed in the exile prophets as being a wheeled chariot. It is not limited to one locale. These changes laid the groundwork for much of Jesus’ and the apostles teaching about the true nature of the kingdom of God in this age.

But the Jews were unable to rebuild the second temple after its destruction in AD 70. This destruction at the hands of the Romans forced massive changes in Judaism leading to the disappearance of the Sadducees and the survival of Judaism through the Pharisees at the Jamnia school. Blood sacrifices were reinterpreted so that good works were now counted as equivalent. Rabbinic Judaism developed in new directions. Judaism survived, but even to this day Jews and Christians who study the Torah can feel the tensions introduced by the fact that the temple system is no more.

For traditional Islam, the caliphate is a divinely-ordained structure, a cornerstone of the world as it should be. The Islamic community is supposed to be led by a political and spiritual leader like Muhammad, Abu Bakr, or Uthman. Even though the history of the caliphate is a very mixed bag, its abolition is viewed by some as one of the greatest tragedies to ever happen to the Islamic community, a fall/curse motif of sorts. While the vast majority of Muslims have embarked on a process of making Islam compatible with the modern world system – nation-states, dictatorships, democracy, human rights, etc. – a minority of Muslims seeks to reestablish the caliphate system. This minority interprets Islam’s primary sources such that spiritual Islam goes hand-in-hand with a political system. They believe you can’t have true Islam without a caliph and a caliphate. They point out, rightly, that this is assumed by the original sources. The Qur’an and Hadith do not advocate for a City of Man vs. City of God intertwined worldview, but rather for the here and now to become the City of God, by the sword if necessary. The borders are supposed to be physical and clear. There is the house and Islam where the caliph rules, then there is the house of war. That’s it.

This minority seeks to implement what ISIS called the “prophetic methodology.” This means moving away from the majority view that advocates for a personal faith in Islam, expressed in the community of the mosque and in nation-states which have blended Western law codes with Shari’a. The minority views this kind of blending as an adulteration of true Islam. How do groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS get their philosophical attraction? They appeal to this tension within the Islamic mind. Can Islam be true Islam without a caliphate? Can jihad really be redefined to only mean spiritual war with oneself and good deeds toward others? Can Shari’a really be faithfully blended with law codes developed by those (like the English and the French) whose traditional religion ascribes partners to Allah?

You can see how the divisions come about. It’s as if a group of disgruntled Jamnia rabbinic students begin to meet secretly, disagreeing with their teachers’ positions that blood sacrifices can all of the sudden be reinterpreted as good works, now that the gentiles have destroyed the temple. That’s not what the text says! they might say, shaking their heads. From there it’s not very long until an armed group is formed and ready to attempt an attack against the Romans. They will spill their blood in hopes that the temple can be rebuilt. They believe faithfulness depends on it.

It’s important to note very clearly that the vast majority of Muslims are compatibilists, that is, they live and believe in the blending of Islam with the modern world. These Muslims are not working for a restoration of the caliphate. And yet we should not be surprised when secret or militant groups form around the ideology of restoring the caliphate. It is a tension not yet resolved within the mind of Islam, despite what a liberal mullah in a Western city might tell you. The tension is real and it’s presence makes sense given the sources and history.

Our contemporary age is witnessing this identity crisis within Islam play out, especially from the 1970’s to the present. Most of our Muslim friends will be far too practical to go down this road, but those ISIS propaganda videos still may strike a chord in their hearts. Practically, we need to support the moderates. A rigid return to the “prophetic ideology” is bad news for all, as the world saw in Al-Baghdadi’s caliphate. If Islamic interpretation can cement the compatabilist view as the dominant one, that is overall good for the world. Though I don’t myself know if its foundation is solid enough to be victorious. It’s main problem is a serious one – a straightforward reading of the primary sources.

But as Christians we should also learn to speak the gospel into this tension, calling our Muslim friends to a better kingdom, one which exists parallel to the kingdoms of this world and does not call for a theocratic empire run by a fallen mortal. Here instead is a spiritual kingdom that adopts its rebels, gives them new hearts and new names, and outlasts all of the temporary and flawed kingdoms of this world. All the while it seeds these transient systems with communities of eternal life and eternal truth – cities within cities as others have described it. Some Muslims longing for a caliphate will find themselves drawn by the Spirit to a surprising answer.

The Empire of God is coming in all its fullness, therefore, now is not the time for jihad. Now is the time for giving ourselves sacrificially to our enemies. It is the age of mercy and free pardon for all who will repent and align with the embassies of this coming kingdom. Our Muslim friends are right to long for a better ruler and they are right that Jesus is returning, yet they need to know that he is returning not as a mere prophet and warner, but as the true and divine king. The answer to the deep longings for a perfect leader ruling a perfect government will not be found in a new caliph. It can only be found in Jesus Christ.

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

A First Visit to the House Church

I waited anxiously at the hole-in-the wall restaurant where we had agreed to meet. It was the kind of place that specialized in a Central Asian pizza of sorts, flatbread with ground beef, oil, and spices spread on top of it. Not the most compatible meal with anxiety. Hama* was running a little late and I was worried that he would bail on me. I was excited that he had agreed to visit a local house church with me for their midweek evening meeting. But I also knew the great fear locals have of meeting with others from their own people group to do something technically illegal – to study the teachings of Jesus in rejection of Islam.

Thankfully, both Hama and Adam* arrived. Adam was another good friend of mine. He had been a believer for a couple of years and was a passionate young evangelist as well as being a goofball. I hoped that they would hit it off given the fact that Hama was almost a believer and also appreciated a good prank. The first meeting could have been worse. They sized one another up and had some respectful dialogue, but I sensed some hesitation in Hama.

“Still want to go, Hama?”

“Yes, I still want to. I have some important questions, especially after what happened with Jesus healing my sister.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m glad you’re taking this risk. I’ve visited this group a few times over these past months and I think they’ll be very receptive to your visit and to your questions.”

I wondered if this visit would be the one to push Hama over the edge. He clearly was wrestling with faith in Jesus, but he knew it would come at a cost.

We walked the ten minutes or so to the house where the church was gathering. It was in a neighborhood just down the hill from the strip of restaurants where we’d met. We left our shoes at the front door, contributing to the couple dozen that were already fanned out there. As we entered the room, everyone broke from their conversation and immediately stood up, proclaiming respectful greetings, making honorable gestures, and shaking hands at the same time. We were pointed to the more honorable side of the room, where guests were always invited to sit. We chose a spot still considered honorable, but shifted over to the side a bit, communicating both an appreciation for the gesture and our own desire to let others take the better spots on the floor. The hosts waited to sit until we had already found our spots, sitting cross-legged on the carpet.

More choruses of welcoming phrases followed after we were seated, accompanied by honorable responses from Hama and Adam and to a lesser extent, myself. Americans just say “thanks” to everything so it takes us a while to get used to utilizing the several dozen respectful greetings and responses that Central Asians fire, machine-gun style, into their every day interactions. Twelve years later, I’m still not a pro, but I’m certainly better at it than I was back then. It helped when I realized that the other party isn’t actually fully listening to your barrage of pleasantries, busy as they are producing their own.

Two men in their late thirties were the obvious leaders of the group, both dressed in traditional attire. Most of the rest of the guests were young twenty-somethings, like my friend Adam. They were dressed in Western clothing. There were only a few women present at this meeting and they chose to meet in the next room over. One of these men in their thirties, Zane, was the pastor, and Allen* was his assistant-in-training. Both had quite the background story, with Zane surviving assassination attempts and Allen being a former member of a terrorist organization. As a twenty-year-old missionary, I was just going to sit back and pray and let these guys do the talking.

The plan had been to continue their study through the book of Revelation and spend some time in prayer together, but they condensed their meeting in order to have abundant time to interact with Hama. After a brief study and prayer together (praying for one of the members who couldn’t come because he’d been beaten by his brothers again), we sang a few worship songs. This particular house church had some issues with tying their teaching too closely with the political aims of their people (sound familiar?), but man, could they sing. I’ve yet to be part of another group where the singing was as passionate as this one. They would often start their songs off in roaring a capella, clapping, and in the wrong key and tempo, much to the consternation of the poor violin player who was supposed to be leading. Still, they meant it. Living through persecution together can have a powerful effect on corporate worship.

After this, they invited Hama to share his story and why he was interested in knowing about Jesus. Hama shared for about fifteen minutes, telling about his years in the UK, his disillusionment with Islam, his study in Matthew, and his sister’s recent healing. Zane listened intently, leaning in. I could see why all these young men were a part of his group. He was a natural leader. His sudden and secret departure for Europe a year later would largely shatter this church, an unfortunate result of him being offered some kind of position as a pastor in Germany.

After Hama was done sharing, Zane began his response. He probably spoke for about thirty minutes, weaving in and out of different reasons why Jesus was the true way and Islam was false. Hama listened and nodded soberly. I kept praying. Zane’s words were going deep. The one part that I clearly remember is when he gestured to a young man sitting in the corner.

“You see him? He’s a part of our enemy people group. His people committed genocide against us. If we were Muslims we would still hate each other. Right, Elijah*?”

“That’s right,” Elijah grinned.

Zane continued, “But because of Jesus we are brothers now. We love one another and we even love that American guy who brought you too. We are all one family now because of Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. Only by believing in him is this possible.”

Hama nodded and I stopped listening to what Zane was saying next as I chewed on what had just occurred. I hadn’t known that Elijah was from that enemy people group. What a powerful testimony to the unity the gospel can produce. These men really should hate one another and Elias should hate me, given his background. Yet here we are.

Zane finished up eventually and closed the meeting. We said our respectful goodbyes and walked back toward the restaurant area. Several of the young men were heading that way too. One of them kept pressing Hama with one evangelistic argument after another. Hama was half listening, but his brain was clearly already saturated. He wasn’t in need of more information, but in need of some time for reflection.

“It’s true, you know,” Elijah said putting his arms around me and Adam. I should hate you and I should hate you and you should both hate me! But we are brothers now. Look at what Jesus has done!”

Even though that house church eventually fell apart, Elijah’s words that night have remained with me. The power of his mere joyful presence in that group of natural enemies was a small window into what eternity will look like – and into what healthy churches among our people group can look like also.

Many in missions emphasize the need to plant only people-group specific churches. The logic is that planting churches combining those from different ethnicities will hamper church multiplication. While I understand the push for speed comes from a motive to see as many reached as possible, I can’t help thinking that the speed will come at the loss of a particular kind of power and beauty. The power and beauty I saw on display that evening as Elijah walked with us. No longer an enemy, now a brother.

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.

Photo by Meilisa Dwi Nurdiyanti on Unsplash

*Names have been changed for security

One Idea for Missionary Care in Local Churches

Two units on my team have recently had to come back to the US temporarily. These kind of unexpected returns to the home country are increasingly normal in this year of 2020, due to both the pandemic and the changing security situation in some parts of East Asia. Because of my team members’ return stateside, I have been thinking again these days about caring for missionaries upon reentry.

A few years ago I served as the missions pastor at what would become our own sending church. I inherited a practice there that I want to commend to others as a unique way to honor and care for missionaries who have just returned.

When missionaries returned during that season, we would set aside an entire evening for them to debrief with the whole team of our pastors and their wives. It was a big commitment to make given the number of folks we had overseas and the number of elders as well. But these gatherings always proved to be very sweet times. We’d arrange abundant snacks and beverages, childcare for the missionaries if needed, and then give them our undivided attention for several hours.

The goal was to give them an opportunity to share everything – the good, the bad, and the ugly. There wasn’t a set agenda for the time other than mingling for a bit, an extended time of listening and Q & A, and then prayer over the missionaries at the end. Yet it was amazing the kind of ground that could be covered in evenings like this. Tears and laughter were not uncommon. It was also a way to show particular honor to our friends who had embraced the costs of the mission field for the sake of the gospel and on behalf of the our church. I’ll never forget the scene of one of our single missionaries sharing her story of serving in SE Asia while all the pastors and wives listened with full attentiveness, seated in the living room and on the floor around her. What an honor, I thought, for this godly woman who may sometimes be overlooked because of her singleness.

When missionaries return to their home country, they are in need of a ministry of listening. Despite other kinds of honor and attention, it’s rare that they actually get to share in depth about their time overseas. Yet there is often a need to process what actually happened, to figure out what the high points and low points were, and to begin the path toward healing after the scars of the previous ministry season. This comes most often through verbal processing with trusted counselors.

There is also the need to be reminded of who they are in Christ and that there is a body of leaders behind them who know them and vouch for them. Many missionaries have such hard seasons on the field that they come back questioning their calling and their fit in the task. These types of conversations with pastors can be key to preventing missionaries from being swayed too much by the attacks and trials that they have experienced. As they pour out their hearts to their shepherds, this can be the beginning of their passion and confidence in their calling being restored.

As a missions pastor, there were other benefits as well. This kind of gathering helped to keep missions front and center for all of our church’s elders. It also provided a rare opportunity for us to actually get together with all the other pastors and their wives for a time centered around our missionary friends. In a fast-paced and time-oriented culture, it was an evening where we got to be event-oriented together, letting our missionaries share as long as they needed to (After all, most missionaries become more event-oriented the longer they are on the field). Also, missions pastors tend to have certain kinds of gifts and not others, so I was always helped by the wise questions and different kinds of insights that came when all the diverse pastors and wives were interacting with our sent ones. In an abundance of counselors there is safety (Proverbs 24:6).

My encouragement to my teammates heading back home was to request this kind of a time with pastors, mentors, or friends soon after they get back. If asked how the church can serve you, it’s not selfish or silly to ask for an evening where you can share everything you need to, unfiltered, with those who have sent you out. This kind of time can be the beginning of processing the victories and losses of your previous term in a healthy way. Getting to share so fully in a setting like this also helps when the relatives or fellow church members don’t really take an interest in the details or stories of our time overseas. Even one chance to get it all out there and be prayed over can be very restorative.

My encouragement to any pastors out there reading this is that you also consider how to implement some kind of expression of this time. The actual format and details of this suggestion are not as important as the principle: Local churches can serve their returning missionaries by providing a context where they can share their heart, in depth and at length, with trusted leaders. The applications of this could be as varied as the unique makeup and contexts of local churches. But any church that pursues this kind of ministry of listening in order to serve their missionaries will be caring for them well, even in a manner worthy of God (3rd John 6).

Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash