If God Wants A Man to Hear The Gospel

I recently made a short trip back to Poet City with my oldest son and Rocky*, a local believer and pastoral intern here in Caravan City. My oldest son was participating in a 2-day discipleship gathering there for expat teenagers. As for Rocky, he jumps at any chance he gets to visit Poet City. This is because he’s in a serious relationship with one of the single, believing women at our former church. This kind of relationship is a big deal, given how few mature believing singles there are among our people group. We’re all rooting for them and doing what we can to help. For me, this includes long road trips full of relationship counsel that’s mostly along the lines of “Don’t worry, bro. This too is normal, trust Jesus, be humble and steady. Don’t sweat the small stuff, that’s not the kind of thing that matters anyway in a healthy marriage.”

After we dropped off my son at a house completely overrun with excited and awkward teenage TCKs (God bless that volunteer team), we drove across the city for dinner with a Bible translator. There, over pizza, we got updates on the status of the Scriptures in some of our minority languages. Then, we were off to the narrow alleys of our old bazaar neighborhood to secure our lodgings at an old Catholic church. Our plan was to then drop in on the men’s discipleship meeting, now led by my local friends Darius* and Alan*, an elder and elder in training, respectively.

However, this being Central Asia, the day’s schedule didn’t exactly go as planned, so it was 10 pm before we finally made it to Darius’ place. By that time, all the other believers had left. And Darius was once again hosting a crew of six unbelieving friends. This cadre of skeptics has kept coming back, week after week, for Bible study, arguments over the gospel’s claims, and games and chai late into the night. They have become such regulars – and so disruptive to discussions that were supposed to be for believers’ discipleship – that Darius and Alan were forced to divide the evening. 6 – 8 pm is for believers’ discipleship, and 8 pm – late is for rowdy apologetics and card games. This has been going on for quite some time now.

Rocky and I arrived, gave big hugs to Darius and Mohammad the photographer (still somehow not a believer), and respectfully greeted the crew of guests. We settled into what looked to be an evening of catching up with Darius, eating sunflower seeds, and playing card games like Pit, an old stock-exchange-inspired card game that I hadn’t played since I was a kid. This particular game involves so much shouting that we decided the most appropriate name for it in the local language should be “Donkey Bazaar.”

Like that evening long ago when Darius first heard the gospel, I read the room and thought it would be a night mostly given to relationship building, not deep spiritual conversation. I was wrong.

During one lull in the games and conversation, photographer Mohammad walked over to the coffee table with its growing piles of sunflower seed shells and chai cups and made a show of removing a Bible from it, kissing it, and placing it on a nearby bookshelf, higher than all of the other books. This is how local Muslims are taught to respect Qur’ans. Mohammad and I are close, so I thought I would offer him a friendly correction over this behavior.

“Brother Muhammad, what are you doing? That’s not a Qur’an, that’s a Bible! You don’t need to do all that showy religious stuff with it. Remember, it’s not the book itself that is the important thing, it’s the truth the book teaches. We are those who focus on the inside reality, not those who respect the physical exterior while neglecting what really matters.”

“No… you should respect both,” responded one of the visitors who was sitting to my left. I turned to him and noticed that he wore a big beard, almost Salafi-style.

And that’s how the next three hours of evangelism, apologetics, and gesticulating conversation got started. I had unintentionally provoked one of my favorite evangelistic topics with Muslims, how it’s not what goes into a man that makes him unclean, but what comes out of him. Starting from that topic, we went all over the place. How can we say the Trinity is a logical belief? Do we really believe these friends deserve a literal eternal hell? How can we say God is perfect if he experiences ‘negative’ emotions like sadness? Wait, Noah and Moses and David all made sacrifices that point to Jesus?

While I opened the door and made some decent contributions in the beginning of the conversations, more and more I sat back and let Rocky and Darius take the lead. What a joy it was to watch them faithfully unpack the gospel and the word of God with conviction, clarity, and winsomeness. This, I thought to myself, is one of the sweetest rewards of being a missionary. Getting to tag-team with faithful local brothers. Getting to see them powerfully sharing God’s Word.

The conversation ended sometime around 2:30 am. Afterward, the three of us debriefed and prayed together for these unbelieving friends. There were points in the conversation where it seemed that at least the bearded one had been wrestling with some very healthy fear and possibly conviction as we spoke about heaven, hell, and the only way of salvation. I learned that a couple months previous, he had finally admitted that Jesus is God, dragged kicking and screaming to this confession by countless hours of Alan’s apologetics. However, this shift within his beliefs had scared him so greatly that he immediately went on pilgrimage to Mecca the week afterward, trying to reground himself in Islam. That’s the kind of thing you only do if you know that you are nearing the point of no return, nearing apostasy.

After praying together for the Word to do its work, Rocky and I took our leave, at last settling into our Catholic lodgings shortly before 4 am. We eventually went to sleep, still feeling energized from the “food to eat you do not know about” of getting to share so much truth together (John 4:32).

Two mornings later, I met up with Alan for coffee and told him about what had happened a couple nights previous. He started laughing.

“Brother!” he said, “I think at last I’m becoming a true Calvinist.”

“Oh yeah? Well… good!”

“Yes, I have been trying my hardest to convince those guys of the gospel for the past few months. And all of my best arguments have come up short. I’ve tried everything. Honestly, if the Spirit doesn’t give understanding, nothing we say can make a difference.”

“Amen,” I said, knowing exactly what Alan was talking about. I think God particularly enjoys demonstrating this to guys like us who are drawn to theology and apologetics – who might be tempted to spend more time speaking of beautifully coherent systems based on God’s word rather than God’s Word itself. Yes, unless the Spirit infuse with power, all our most brilliant arguments are, in the end, impotent. As the song says, All is vain unless the Spirit of the Holy One comes down.

It started snowing outside the cafe as Alan and I continued our conversation.

“The reason I didn’t see you guys that night is because I hadn’t heard you were dropping in,” Alan said. “And unlike every other week, that night I left early. I was so discouraged and so tired from everything seeming to fail, that I just told Darius that I was going home to sleep.”

“But now I know,” he continued, “that even if we’ve given up, if God wants a man to hear the gospel on a given night, he will bring brothers from three hours away to make sure it happens.”

Alan and I laughed together, encouraged at God’s kindness in still choosing to use us even in all our short-sightedness. I encouraged him (and myself) again not to rely on our own logic, wisdom, or words, but on the power of God’s Word. He alone holds the power of salvation. Yet he delights to work through his Word as it is spoken through his people.

If God wants a man to hear the gospel, then that man is going to hear the gospel. One way or another, heaven will arrange earth so the will of the king is carried out.

What an honor to get to be part of this.



	[9] 	Remember the former things of old;
	for I am God, and there is no other;
		I am God, and there is none like me,
	[10] declaring the end from the beginning
		and from ancient times things not yet done,
	saying, ‘My counsel shall stand,
		and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
	[11] calling a bird of prey from the east,
		the man of my counsel from a far country.
	I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass;
		I have purposed, and I will do it. (ESV)

Isaiah 46:9–11

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

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

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Consciously Multilingual Mesopotamia

This is a region of so many world firsts for linguistic innovation. Unlike Egypt, China or India, its cities and states had always been consciously multilingual, whether for communication with neighbours who spoke different languages, or because their histories had made them adopt a foreign language to dignify court, religion or commerce. This is the area where we find the first conscious use of a classical language for convenience in communication, as a lingua franca, an early apparent triumph of diplomatic pragmatism over national sentiment.

-Ostler, Empires of the Word, p.34

Here, Ostler is referring to ancient Mesopotamia. This is a region – like our own area of Central Asia – that has been ‘consciously multilingual’ for as far back as we have records. This is a different posture toward language than many of us are used to who come from societies more in the monolingual tradition of ancient Egypt or China.

In a multilingual culture, a person is raised to assume that multiple languages will be heard and used on a daily basis. To gain a competitive advantage, as well as just for the convenience and joy of it, many will pick up two or three other languages in addition to the mother tongue spoken in their home. These societies do not assume that language use is a zero-sum game, where the use of one language inevitably means the demotion or withering of others. Rather, there is often a pragmatic long-term bilingualism or trilingualism. In one city close to us, many are even quadrilingual, using four languages on the regular. And they’ve been like this for countless generations.

Given the strengths and weaknesses of different languages, I prefer this approach that chooses to have not just one, but multiple tools in one’s toolbelt of tongues. For example, English may be fantastic for its motley plethora of specific nouns and adjectives (case in point – motley and plethora). On the other hand, English is a rhyme-poor language. So, for poetry, I’ll take our Central Asian tongue.

The Jerusalem Talmud would also concur with this position that languages have unique strengths: “Four languages are pleasing for use in the world: Greek for song, Latin for battle, Syriac (Aramaic) for dirges, Hebrew for speech.” Even God himself must have, for reasons of his own, chosen Hebrew and a short detour into Aramaic for biblical revelation until the coming of Christ, and then chosen Greek for the revelation that followed. Among his many reasons for this, one of them must have had something to do with the nature of the languages themselves – not that they were more holy or somehow superior, but that they were somehow more useful.

When it comes to missions, all this means that when sharing the gospel with a multilingual people group, we should be like the ancient Mesopotamians. We should feel free to share as soon as possible in a language they understand, even while we gauge over the long term which language might lead to the strongest advance of the gospel among them. The ancient inhabitants of Ur had a ‘diplomatic pragmatism’ when it came to their language use. Our own ‘spiritual pragmatism’ in language use should be shaped by whatever leads to the clearest and most compelling proclamation over the long haul. That might mean learning two languages, perhaps first a dominant (and often easier) trade language to see some friends come to faith and then a much more difficult minority mother tongue to see those friends formed into a church that goes on to multiply faithfully among its people group.

We also need to be careful that those of us from predominantly monolingual societies don’t impose limitations upon our multilingual friends that simply aren’t present in their language worldview. For example, the churches of one of our sister people groups hold all their Bible studies and church services in two languages. Their mother tongue is used for worship, prayer, discussion, and preaching. But the Bible is always read and studied in the national language. This is because they cannot read or write in their mother tongue. Yet because of the school system, they are highly literate in the national language. So, they simply switch back and forth as needed. To outsiders like us, this may seem a highly inconvenient or unsustainable system. But to a multilingual people group, this is fine. “We use this language for this part and that language for that part. What’s the issue here?”

We need to be careful that when it comes to big decisions like who gets a missionary and who doesn’t, who gets a bible translation or not, and whether or not we will make the costly investment to learn a second language, we are truly seeking to understand how ‘consciously multilingual’ people groups actually function.

They have a kind of freedom toward language that may be hard for us to grasp at first. It may challenge some of our categories. But if we can join them in that freedom, then we may be able to leverage it for the spread of the gospel.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

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

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Good Contextualization Introduces Outside Forms

Many missionaries assume that contextualization means learning the local culture so that you can do things as the locals would do them – that good contextualization means not introducing outside, foreign forms. But what happens when the local culture and the local ways of doing things actually prevent indigenous believers from obeying the Bible? In this case, contextualization means learning how the local culture is weak and what must be added to it so that Christian faithfulness might result. Yes, there is a time when the good contextualizer intentionally brings in outside forms for the sake of the indigenous church.

We must sometimes import things like structures, forms, and methods from other cultures in order for a locally specific Christian culture to emerge. If our missions paradigm rules this out from the beginning, then our contextualization will be half-baked and we will find ourselves stuck in work that never breaks out of the chains imposed on it by our people group’s particular brand of fallenness. Herein lies another common blindspot of contemporary missions.

The brokenness and beauty of every culture mean that certain biblically-necessary categories and forms remain, ready to be discovered and redeemed – while other necessary things have long since disappeared or been gutted entirely. Take language as one clear example. Some unreached peoples, incredibly, retain a good word for atonement. However, others have no word for grace. The former word/form can often be redeemed, filled, and clarified with biblical meaning. The latter word/form must be introduced – and that from the outside.

Sometimes the issue is not language but what a culture lacks in terms of forms or models of organization. Our locals have the hardest time prioritizing the weekly gathering of believers. Local believers are willing to meet in their own homes for years on end with foreigners, but will not prioritize the weekly gathering with other locals if left to the structures, models, and motivations of their own background. Without the right kind of contextual intervention, they end up stuck in this disobedience for the long term.

There are several reasons for this problem of gathering that have to do with our local culture. First, when it comes to Islam, mosque attendance is optional, with prayer at home being a ‘good enough’ equivalent. In addition, there is no such thing as mosque membership. Mosque worship, as it turns out, is a surprisingly individualistic and casual affair, despite what it looks like from the outside when we see those rows of bodies bowing in unison. Political party membership does exist locally but it is a purely patron-client relationship, where locals are paid small monthly salaries to secure their loyal vote and occasional attendance at party events (which may include election-time vehicle convoys that honk and dance their way down our street at 1 am).

The one place that locals will show up regularly and religiously is family gatherings. It might be the weekly family picnics that happen in the spring and fall. Or, the weekly family visit to the grave of a sister who tragically died in her youth. But when Mom or Dad say it’s a family gathering, you have to be there. Locals will cancel everything else in order to be in regular, faithful attendance at family events.

All this means locals have no good indigenous models or tools for exercising committed attendance and membership outside of gatherings of blood family. Add to this the massive issues of trust that exist in this culture – and it’s easy to see why locals won’t/can’t gather weekly with the church. That is, unless they are pushed and helped to do so.

The two indigenous churches that we’ve been a part of have largely cleared this hurdle. How? In addition to the steady drip of faithful preaching and discipleship on these topics (“The local church is your true family!”), they have also introduced foreign structures such as church membership, church covenants, and church discipline – all of which helpfully require and reinforce regular attendance. Remember, none of these are structures that could be sourced in the local culture. As I wrote above, there’s no real model for meaningful membership and faithful attendance here outside of physical kinship. As for church discipline, locals are shocked when they learn about Matthew 18 and often swear that it would never work here. And as for covenant, the only local shell left of this crucial concept is the twisted doctrine of jihad.

This lack meant that the missionaries connected with these two churches made the choice to introduce these foreign structures and concepts (which I would contend are universal biblical concepts that always require local expression). This was not because they were ignorant of the local culture or secretly believed in the superiority of Western ways. No, it was because they were working hard to go as deep as possible in the local language and culture. And while they were doing that, they contextualized. They learned that local culture didn’t have the forms and structures necessary for obeying Jesus. So, that practically meant that forms needed to be borrowed, introduced, and adapted as needed.

The ironic thing is that many missionaries initially look at the use of outside structures like this and think it is sloppy colonial-style missions that just wants to copy/paste what’s been done in the West. What they are missing is that good contextualization shouldn’t merely do as the local culture does. Neither should forms or methods be ruled out simply because they feel old-fashioned or Western to us, the missionaries. No, real contextualization learns a local culture so well that it sees where its weaknesses are, and then it responds accordingly. It’s not about us or our baggage or our desire for some kind of pristine and isolated contextualized Christianity. It’s about helping the locals obey the Bible and working with them to find faithful ways to apply biblical principles in their context. If an imported form fills a crucial gap that would not have otherwise been filled, then so be it. Introduce that word for grace or that helpful process for interviewing those who want to be baptized. Trust me, the locals will find a way to make that form their own anyway. They always do.

Yesterday, we heard of some friends who are going to introduce a system of formal membership into the network of believers they’ve been working with for years. Now, these missionaries are some of the most knowledgeable and deferential when it comes to the local language and culture. They are veterans of great skill and experience. But the locals they’ve been discipling, like many of those we’ve worked with, will not of their own initiative prioritize the weekly gathering in the way they should. So, after years of teaching, modeling, and pleading with these locals, our friends are now going to roll out a system of church membership and see if that helps. They are bringing in an outside form in order to free their local friends from their specific cultural weaknesses – so that they might better obey Jesus.

My prediction? It will work. Not only that, but they will find this to be one of the most contextual things they’ve done so far.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

Two international churches in our region are in need of pastors, one needs a lead pastor and one an associate pastor. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

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

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Being A Christian Has Made You A Better Man

I’ve heard it said that if a believer from our region faithfully endures persecution long enough, his unbelieving family will eventually come to respect him for it – and will even boast about him to their Muslim friends and neighbors.

“This is our son. He became a Christian and for years we were awful to him because of it. But he put up with all of it and is doing better than ever. What a man!”

This past week I heard a testimony where this has actually happened. Now that we’re back in Caravan City*, we are once again fellow church members with Brother Ahmed*, the local believer who once taught me that jihad is the only understanding of covenant in his culture.

Ahmed was testifying because a group of us who were part of the church back in 2020 were spending the evening together, sharing how God has been faithful to us over the past five years.

“You know that things with my family were terrible after I became a Christian,” Ahmed shared. “Especially on my dad’s side. For three years they cut me off and wanted nothing to do with me.”

Shunning like this is one of the more common forms of persecution used against believers here. It’s a pressure mechanism meant to cut them off from their primary support network and publicly shame them back into conformity. In a culture where the family network is everything because there are almost no trustworthy public institutions to rely on, this is often a devastating blow.

Ahmed continued,

“Last year my middle brother came back from abroad and asked to stay with us. We were happy to have him live with us while he was looking for a job. At least, that was the reason he gave us for his visit. He later admitted that our dad had sent him to spy on us.

“My family was convinced that I had become a Christian so that I could live a wild life of sinful freedom. But instead, my brother saw my life, my marriage, and even interviewed a lot of the people I work with.

“After a few weeks, my brother admitted to me why he had really come. Then, he said to me, ‘I now see that becoming a Christian has made you a better man, not a worse one. In fact, you are a much better man than I am!’

“I am so thankful to God because after some very difficult years I now have a good relationship with my family, they respect me a lot, and we can see them all the time.”

I was so encouraged to hear Ahmed’s testimony to God’s faithfulness. Of course, it doesn’t always work out this way. However, my sense is that many more local believers could have healthy and respectful relationships with their families if they just hold on a little longer. The temptation many face is to believe that the broken relationship will be that way forever. But kinship ties go so deep in this culture that even when someone has shamed the family through something as drastic as apostasy, there still remain deep desires for relationship underneath all the persecution.

In the meantime, what local believers need to be reminded of is that faithfully enduring their family’s shaming is a way God has given them to accrue true honor (1 Pet 2:7). And not just in God’s eyes, but that even their unbelieving family may someday come to see their stubborn commitment to Jesus as honorable. Those of us in relationship with local believers can and should encourage them in light of this to remain “steadfast, immovable” knowing that heaven’s approval is sure – and their family’s eventual approval is not as impossible as it might seem today.

It’s interesting also to note his family’s stated concern – “We thought becoming a Christian would make you a bad man.” If this same fear is shared by other families whose children follow Jesus, then perhaps efforts could be made to get word back to these families of local believers – good gossip as it were – about how Christian faith has actually made their shunned family member even more of an upright and honorable person.

As for Ahmed, he was beaming as he sat next to his local believing wife (something he also once felt was impossible), testifying to how kind God has been to him.

Many believers grieve the loss of their families after they come to faith. This tragic outcome is often unavoidable, even for the most winsome of witnesses. Yet it is not impossible for believers from Muslim backgrounds to hold fast to Jesus and to eventually be reconciled to their Islamic families. May we pray and labor accordingly.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

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

*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security

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How One International Church Actually Planted An Indigenous Church

If you know very much about international churches, then you know that they have a poor track record of planting indigenous churches in the cities and countries where they worship. International churches often meet in English and focus on serving the foreigners, the expats, the migrant workers, and other non-locals. Their culture is often ‘Global-Westernish’ and their mission is usually a simple one – provide spiritual care and community for the foreigners. When they do this well, they can be vibrant and healthy spiritual communities for their members, even if they have very little impact on their host city’s native residents. However, when they do their job poorly, they can function like lowest-common-denominator expat clubs that model neither sound doctrine nor biblical Christian community.

It’s no wonder many missionaries have been taught to stay as far away as possible from international churches – especially if their goal is to learn the local language and culture and plant healthy indigenous churches. The fact is that very few international churches have ever gone on to plant indigenous, local-language churches.

But this may be changing.

In the last twenty years or so something has been happening in the international churches that meet in the unreached cities of the 10/40 window. Starting in the UAE, a handful of these churches committed to becoming healthy, biblical churches. Of course, as this took place they naturally developed a heart for missions and church planting. As these international churches were reformed, they then got involved in planting and reforming other international churches. A small network of related churches took shape and soon began to spread to other countries and continents. Before long, churches were being planted among other non-English-speaking migrant populations as well in the cities where these international churches ministered.

All of this was, of course, encouraging. But it didn’t mean that most missionaries suddenly viewed international churches as having much of a role in reaching the indigenous population. Sure, some locals joined these churches as members and worshipped in English. But there was precious little evidence that these churches were going to be strategic in planting churches for the locals. After all, where could you point to say that this had ever happened, instead of the international church simply sidetracking the missionaries from their difficult task? Because of this, most missionaries held them at arm’s length, despite growing calls from these churches for missionaries themselves to join them and to help them reach the locals. Some missionaries held this posture because of the poor or confused ecclesiology that is all too common among cross-cultural workers. But even missionaries who loved the local church had major concerns regarding contextualization and time investment when it came to this unproven idea that international churches could result in indigenous church planting.

Looking back on my own family’s experience, our concerns were three-fold. First, we were concerned that the international churches in our area were not healthy enough to play a central role in our church planting efforts. This was the case during our first term in Poet City. The international church there during that season chose a squishy pragmatic road when it came to things like expositional preaching, women preaching, gospel clarity in the services, and unbelievers taking the Lord’s supper. We felt we couldn’t be members there and work through this church, but rather had to work around them until they were willing to draw some more biblical lines.

Our second and third concerns had to do with vision and commitment. Would international churches actually embrace a robust vision of planting healthy local-language churches? And would they then be able to make the long-term sacrifices needed to actually pull off such a vision? Planting indigenous churches requires a massive investment of time, sweat, and ongoing problem-solving. It’s complicated enough to care for your own flock in one language and one broadly shared culture, let alone all the complications that come with trying to plant churches in a different language and culture. Noble intentions simply wouldn’t be enough.

At the beginning of our second term, and at that point newly living in Caravan City, we were connected to an international church that was actually healthy. This was deeply encouraging for us, as we were in need of some solid pastoring after a messy first term where we had struggled through language learning, team conflict, and planting a church in the house of a wolf. But what was doubly encouraging to us was that right as we were joining this church, they adopted a specific vision to see local-language churches planted.

It took about five years, but in the last few months they have done it – planted a local-language, indigenous church. As I reflect on how they’ve done this, a number of distinctives stand out. My hope would be that other international churches with a heart to plant indigenous churches can learn from the approach of our church here in Caravan City, not as some rigid methodology, but more as an example of sound principles and practices that can be wisely applied to different international contexts.

First, Caravan City Baptist Church (CCBC, as I’ll call them here) was committed to becoming a healthy, biblical church. Rather than finding its center in a vague mission to ‘provide welcoming community for as many expats as we can,’ this church committed to learning what the Bible had to say about the nature and characteristics of a local church – then they set about implementing it. This meant they focused on the gospel being clear, on a biblical understanding of conversion, and on fleshing out the characteristics of a healthy church. This pursuit of becoming a local church faithful to the scriptures was primary. If this meant certain expats left because they didn’t want to be part of a church that practiced accountable membership and church discipline, then so be it. This kind of posture evidenced a faith that believes a healthy church will, in the long run, be far more powerful and effective than one whose primary commitment is to be nice. It also meant that they would be able to model the kind of healthy church beliefs and corresponding structures strong enough to endure even in a place like Central Asia.

Second, CCBC adopted a specific vision to plant indigenous churches. At least in Central Asia, though I’d warrant just about anywhere, indigenous church planting doesn’t happen naturally. No, church planting requires a specific vision and commitment. CCBC adopted a vision to itself be an English-speaking church that would seek to plant local language-specific churches. This clarity for the church members and leadership meant that they were then remarkably receptive to missionary types like us when we began to talk specifics with them about what this kind of commitment would actually entail. Notice the sequence of what happened here. A clear vision (1) led to the kind of practical posture required (2) to plant churches across linguistic, cultural, and ethnic barriers.

Third, CCBC freed up its members for local language ministry. “As a missionary here, you need to know that we consider your ministry to the locals as your primary service to this church. We’re not going to seek to overload you with other service commitments to the church body because we know that ministering to the locals requires so much. Instead, we want to shepherd you and encourage you in your goal of seeing a local church plant.” We were stunned to hear this early on from the pastors at CCBC. It really is quite hard to be a healthy member of an English-language church and to seek to do local language ministry day in and day out. Trying to be a meaningful part of one church while trying to plant another can easily wear anyone out. If you’ve kids, then this is even harder. So, knowing we had this kind of freedom from the leadership to not be at every church event was deeply helpful.

Fourth, CCBC invested in local language resources and contexts to reach and disciple locals. The church leadership was intentional about getting solid resources translated. For example, back in Poet City, we used CCBC’s translated church covenant as a model for the one we created for the local church plant there, as well as a book on biblical eldership. They purchased ear-piece interpretation devices for the English services, a helpful way to serve locals who have come to faith when no local church in their language exists for them yet. CCBC’s leadership also supported the formation of local language home groups that met during the week, small groups of believers that were crucial for locals who were not able to experience deeper fellowship and encouragement during the English gatherings.

Fifth, CCBC opened up temporary membership for those who didn’t know English. As locals came to faith, they were welcomed into membership in the international church in the same kind of process that foreigners were, albeit facilitated by translation. Often, there were major language barriers, but structures like the local language home groups and in-service interpretation meant that these locals were able to be grafted into the body in a meaningful way even though everyone understood that it was not a viable long-term solution. Because of this, members and leaders who spoke the local language carried a special burden in this season to make sure those locals attending who didn’t speak English were truly being cared for and growing, and not falling through the cracks.

Sixth, CCBC had an elder who learned the local language. This pastor cared for the locals as they were coming to faith, led the home group they were a part of, and has now gone on to pastor the indigenous church plant as they seek to raise up local elders. I view this piece as extremely important. Having an elder, and not merely members, committed to learning the local language and leading a church plant not only provides better shepherding for the locals in the transition period, but it also keeps the indigenous church plant front and center – prioritized – for the busy church leadership and staff.

Seventh, CCBC had elders who continued to make English language pastoral ministry their main focus. While one elder and other members in the church took up the mantle of reaching the indigenous population, the majority of the elders stayed focused on the ministry of word and prayer in English. Just as an international church where no leaders learn the local language is less likely to ever plant an indigenous church, so an international church where all of the pastors are cross-cultural missionaries focused on the locals is also unlikely to do so. The international church must remain a strong and healthy body itself in order to one day become a mother church. At CCBC, this necessary health was greatly helped by the fact that the majority of the elders were not neck-deep in language learning, but in shepherding people in their own language.

Eighth, CCBC was willing to take the slow, proclamation-centric path of church planting. In a city where many were saying that only DMM-style, secretive oikos house churches would work, CCBC instead chose to focus on straightforward evangelism, discipleship, preaching, and modeling to open, mixed groups of locals. They didn’t squirm over foreigners leading, preaching, and baptizing, since for a number of years foreigners were the only ones biblically qualified to do so. Of course, the longterm vision was (and is) to see indigenous churches led by locals. And so far, the local church plant has one local elder in training and one local deacon, both faithful and trustworthy men. This is a remarkable amount of progress compared to most of the church planting work here. CCBC took the slow route, which in the end has proved to be faster than other methods that promised rapid church planting movements. Yes, it took five years from the initial attempts to gather locals together. And those early days were very hit-or-miss. Our family was there for those initial discouraging days, when some weeks no locals would show up to study the Bible in spite of dozens having been invited. But when, after four years, we moved back to Caravan City, we saw the same thing we had seen in Poet City. When the missionaries are willing to do direct Pauline ministry by example, when they are willing to be the stable core of an indigenous church plant for a decade or so, healthy churches get birthed. Churches that last.

Now, there are many missions contexts around the world where international churches are not possible. So I’m not saying that they are the key ingredient to cross-cultural church planting. But I am excited about the emphasis in circles like CrossCon on international churches because I believe the dominant missionary narrative that they are a distraction or even a hindrance to indigenous church planting is wrong. Rather, international churches can and should actually plant indigenous churches, and therefore serve as a strategic part of missionary efforts to plant churches among unreached people groups. It will take some specific commitments and actions for this to happen, the most important of which is a commitment to themselves become a healthy, biblical church that does faithful ministry. But if they do this, then I believe we can see all around the world what we are seeing here in Caravan City, an international church that actually plants an indigenous one.

The international church in Poet City is in need of a pastor. This church is in a much better place than it was during our first term, and eager for a faithful shepherd to lead their English-language church, which includes many members who are cross-cultural church planters. This role is partially funded and partially support-raised. If you have a good lead for a potential pastor, reach out to me for more details.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

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

*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

A Culture of Spontaneous (And Divine) Affirmation

Recently, something took place here that was so spot-on for our people group that I knew I’d simply have to write about it.

Mr. Hope* – as his name translates in English – is a local believer who reminds me of a gnarled old war veteran. He’s not fought in a literal war himself, but he has been a believer since the 1990s. This means that he’s been a part of four or five local Central Asian churches that have imploded and, eventually, disappeared. Now in his third decade of faith, he has been a direct witness to the brokenness and messiness of the bride of Christ as it has struggled to take root in the difficult soil of Mr. Hope’s people group. No doubt he also contributed to some of these implosions. The difference is that he has, unlike so many others, been willing to give the local church yet one more try. And praise God for that.

Mr. Hope carries himself as a man worn down by trials and by lots of disappointment. He often wears a bit of a scowl on his broad, wrinkled face. He manages to crack a smile and respond with honorable greetings when addressed by others. But you can sense that he’s still wary of trusting the others, especially the other local believers. He also occasionally drops bombs – and does so publicly. He might try to take over a service with some unexpected strong objection, opinion, or warning that leaves the leadership struggling to know how to respond to him respectfully and yet still help the meeting continue in the direction it really should be going.

This happened again at a recent meeting. My wife and I are currently members at the international church, so although we attend all of the services of this local language church plant in order to lend support to our teammates and lead worship, we were not at this members-only meeting. According to the missionary pastor, Mr. Hope stood up in the middle of the meeting and dramatically announced that because of serious and various concerns he had decided to leave the church plant and join another group. Then, he simply left.

The rest of the members present were left somewhat confused. Where had this come from? Even though Mr. Hope had had some friction with other members and the leaders from time to time, most thought things were at a relatively good place, all things considered. Regardless, the member’s meeting needed to continue. Among the important items on the agenda that night was a vote to begin devoting a portion of the church’s giving toward pastoral support – a massive weakness in the churches of this region and a vital form of obedience that would need to be learned in order for this church to one day be truly be healthy.

The day after the meeting, the pastor called Mr. Hope to see what he could find out.

“Is everything okay, Mr. Hope? We weren’t sure what had happened to make you decide that you are leaving the church.”

“Oh yes, everything is fine,” Mr. Hope responded. “I just wanted to know if people truly loved me.”

“But… Really?… What do you mean?”

“Well, I knew that if I left a meeting in that way and no one called me, then that would mean the other church members didn’t really love me. But because you and several others have called to see how I’m doing, now I know that you really love me.”

“So… you’re not leaving the church?”

“No! Of course not.”

Our friend the pastor was left both relieved and likely a little perturbed. I couldn’t help but laugh when he told me the story later that week.

“That is so like our people group!” I laughed, then turned to explain to some of our newer teammates.

“We’ve also had a lot of this kind of thing happen to us. It’s like locals’ somewhat extreme way to fish for affirmation. They might call you up, tell you they’re upset with you and say all kinds of things that feel to us like shaming and blaming. But most of the time they just want to hear that you love and respect them and really value their friendship, even though it’s been a while that you’ve been able to call. Simple affirmation usually defuses most of it.”

It’s true. Our locals have inherited a culture where causing drama is one of the more common responses to feeling a lack of affirmation. To those of us coming from the West, it can feel a bit like we’ve gone back to junior high. Do we really need to resort to these kinds of tactics just because you’re feeling insecure about yourself or our relationship?

While some of this is in fact due to unhealthy – even destructive and exhausting – strategies of communication and relationships, part of it is also due to the fact that our locals live in a culture where friends, relatives, and even mere associates are constantly affirming one another verbally. This clicked for me at a recent Simeon Trust preaching training. Several times during breaks, one of my local friends would come up behind me, squeeze my shoulder, and say something to the tune of, “You lion brother of mine!”

As I thought back on my close friendships with men like Darius* and Mr. Talent*, I realized that they were always doing things like this as well. Spontaneous, poetic verbal affirmation was consistently coming out of them toward those around them, and towards me. Having grown up here, this is now second nature to them.

We’ve long known that our people are hyper-sensitive to criticism or even loving critical feedback. But what I’ve now come to realize is that they are also sensitive to the absence or even decrease of spontaneous verbal affirmation. It seems that one of the primary ways our locals stay encouraged and keep hopelessness at bay is through these kinds of constant verbal exchanges.

Needless to say, Westerners are usually not very good at this kind of on-the-fly poetic affirmation. When I think of those Westerners who are my closest friends and colleagues here, we barely ever compliment and affirm one another directly. Rather, most of our affirmation for one another is implied, understood, indirect. Every once in a while, we’ll come out with some direct affirmation, but it’s not super common, and it’s certainly not second nature.

Alas for the local believer who becomes good friends with a Western Christian. While the local has been programmed by his upbringing to expect heartfelt affection to result in a positive deluge of direct verbal affirmation, he must now learn the hard way that when it comes to his Western mentor, he’ll have to read this, most of the time at least, between the lines. It’s a bit like the classic confused husband who thinks his wife should be able to simply intuit his love for her because he works hard to provide and protect. Wait, she needs me to tell her regularly that I love her? Doesn’t she know that already? The wife, on the other hand, can’t understand why her husband doesn’t love her anymore.

If Central Asian believers need to grow by not creating relational drama in order to get affirmation (and they do), then Western believers need to grow in their willingness to regularly verbalize bold affirmation. I’m not very good at this, but I’ve been experimenting recently, especially with my local friends who work regularly with Westerners here. So far, the results are good. The effect of a spontaneous shoulder squeeze and proclamation of “Ah, my only begotten brother!” seems as if I’m giving them a glass of cold water while they wander in a parched and desert land. They light up.

I don’t know how much of this dynamic played into the situation with Mr. Hope. But now that I know of his recent stunt at that member’s meeting, I’ll be more careful to show verbal appreciation for him in future interactions – and pray that over time, his knowledge of Christ’s affection and stunning statements of love for him will ground him when he’s feeling insecure or unappreciated.

He may be a grumpy and gnarled veteran of church implosions. But in Christ, he is a son, an heir of the kingdom, a royal priest, a beloved brother, and even a future judge of angels. These are stunning titles, rich and even divinely sanctioned. I have the sense that even Mr. Hope would light up were we to spontaneously put an arm around him, and proclaim them over him.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

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

*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

A Proverb on The Power of Slow Work

Work gradually done is a king upon his throne

– local oral tradition

This local proverb speaks of the power and efficacy of slow, steady, diligent work. This kind of work is compared to a king enthroned – weighty, authoritative, influential. It reminds me of Proverbs 12:24, “the hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.” According to both our local oral wisdom and Solomon, authority is the natural result of long-term labor that has proven wise, fruitful, and effective.

One of the very interesting things about this season in our area of Central Asia is that we are now seeing the good fruit that has come from missionaries who years ago chose the slow and steady route to church planting. In multiple cities now, church plants that both locals and movement-driven missionaries said would never work are actually thriving. And, wonder of wonders, they are raising up faithful, humble, qualified local leaders. Yes, their road has been very messy and involved much suffering. But they have kept their hand to the plow and kept going, one plodding step at a time.

I heard this past week about a local pastor who has approached our former team in Poet City to ask them for help in leadership development. As is modeled by most foreign organizations, this local leader has relied on ministry programs and salaried positions to raise up other leaders. But this approach keeps failing him. This is because ministry salaries and positions cannot create faithful character, though they sure can wreck the character of young and immature potential leaders. However, this pastor has seen from afar as young men like Darius* and Alan* have been raised up over a number of years to now be a faithful elder and faithful elder-in-training, respectively. And this evidence of slow labor speaks with a kind of authority all its own.

The slow route of faithful shepherding will always lap the seemingly fast route of exciting methods. And when rushed and shallow work inevitably collapses due to an inadequate foundation, other work will suddenly be elevated, enthroned as it were. If this newfound authority is then accompanied by a humility based on the fact that the principles and methods employed were not really our own at all but merely an attempt to be faithful to God’s word – then that newfound influence can be put to good, even eternal, use.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

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

*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash.com

How I Finally Learned the Word for Speed Bump

It took me a long time to remember the local word for speed bump. This word, like thousands of others in our Central Asian language, is a loan word from a larger regional language. The words borrowed from this particular larger tongue simply won’t stick as easily in my brain as the native words of our local Indo-European one, or those borrowed from other related languages. This is because this other language is from a different language family altogether, so when I hear this kind of new word I feel like I’ve got nothing to connect it to, nothing in the broader structure of language forms and meaning that I can hang it on. It feels like random syllables of sound floating in space that I just have to memorize with no help from context whatsoever. It would be like learning English if English were infused with thousands of random Chinese words. The sound and meaning clues of these Chinese words would be from an entirely different system than the rest of the English language being learned.

No, I eventually learned the word for speed bump because it was shouted at me over and over again on a drive with Hakkan*, a former guerilla fighter and father of Zoey*, one of my wife’s good village friends. Hakkan, a strutting and mustachioed patriarch in Underhill village, is the kind of character who believes that foreigners can understand your language better if you say everything more slowly – and much louder.

“A.W.!”

“Yes, elder brother Hakkan?”

“WE’RE EATING GOOSE TODAY!”

“Wow, why are you all troubling yourselves so much on our behalf?”

“NO! YOU ARE OUR GUESTS! SO WE WILL EAT THE FAT GOOSE! LOOK AT THIS HUGE KNIFE I WILL BEHEAD IT WITH!”

Hakkan always got a kick out of showing off his huge knife, especially when my wife was around, whose name he could never quite remember. Instead, he called her a mashup of Islamic names that, if tortured enough, bore a slight resemblance to my wife’s name.

“SAIF-ADI! I’M BEHEADING A GOOSE! A FAT GOOSE, EH?! HAHA!”

Anyway, during one of our many trips to visit his household, the family planned an outing to a nearby city. Something was wrong with their vehicle, so they asked me to drive us all in our SUV. In true village style, nine or ten of us piled into our seven-seater as we began the drive to this nearby city. First, we drove about a half hour down a road with ancient and modern village ruins on our right and melon fields and a large lake on our left. Then, at the end of the lake, we turned right and began to zig-zag our way up a mountain. Our destination was on the other side, in the next valley over from Underhill village. I had once looked down on this city from a different mountaintop with my friend, the Sufi Mullah.

As it turned out, this road was full of unmarked speed bumps. In recent years, traffic speed cameras have begun popping up in the larger cities and even some of the popular intercity roads. But for decades, and still to this day in most places, the most effective method of combating the maniacal driving tendencies of the local men is to force them to drive over dozens and dozens of punishing speed bumps.

Now, I consider myself a pretty good driver. But, for the life of me, I have the hardest time registering an oncoming speed bump, especially if it’s the same color as the road and otherwise relatively unmarked. It’s so bad I’ve sometimes gotten actual airtime from hitting speed bumps way too fast. Yes, dear reader, say a prayer for the poor suspension system of our family vehicle.

Hakkan was in the front seat with me that day as I drove this particular mountain road for the first time. And every time that I managed not to see a speed bump in time (which was quite often), Hakkan would brace himself and yell,

“TASA!!!” which, of course, is the local word for speed bump.

On that drive, I heard, “TASA! A.W.! TASAAA!!!” so many times that the blasted loanword finally stuck in my brain.

Eventually, we made it down the other side of the mountain and to our destination. I thought I had driven pretty slowly overall, but I distinctly remember Hakkan’s younger teenage daughter in the backseat moaning from carsickness,

“I have died, ohhh, I have died!”

Hakkan, as always, was somehow scowling and smiling at the same time, looking like he could kill you but like he’d rather make you laugh and show you some large knives.

It’s been years since that day when the word for speed bump finally stuck. But today, as my family once again drove into the mountains, anytime my wife spotted a speed bump for me she would impersonate Hakkan from that outing long ago,

“TASAAA!!!”

As for Hakkan, I haven’t heard from him ever since he tried to recruit me to help him get a second wife without his first wife or daughters knowing about it. He had somehow met a migrant African worker in a nearby hospital who knew English but not much of the local language. So, Hakkan called me up to get me to translate for their secret plans for polygamous matrimony. For my part, I was very disappointed in Hakkan and told him I wanted nothing to do with it. That seems to have put a damper on our relationship.

However, this being Central Asia, sooner or later I’ll hear from Hakkan again and he’ll pretend like nothing ever happened. And when that day comes, I’ll tell him how thankful I am that because of his help, I finally learned the word for speed bump – and that every time we hit one in a bad way, we think of him.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

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

*Names of places and individuals have been changed for security

Toward a Biblical Understanding of Trust

“Where is your ID card, teacher?” demanded the soldier at the checkpoint.

“By the Qur’an, I… I must have left it back in my car at the university. I’m just riding along now to drop these guests off in Caravan City and then returning right away,” responded our host from the front passenger seat, clearly kicking himself for forgetting this important piece of documentation.

“Where are you from?” the guard asked, eyes narrowing.

“I’m from this city. I’m of our people. And I’m a member of the _____ tribe, a well-known and respected tribe, as you know.”

“That’s right,” our driver chimed in. “He’s one of ours, from here, this city. And everyone knows his tribe’s reputation.”

“Elder brother, you need an ID, or I can’t let you through,” the guard said. “Do you at least have a picture of your ID?”

Our host searched his phone frantically for a picture, telling the guard he should have one somewhere.

As the guard waited impatiently, our driver tried a different strategy.

“I know Mr. Muhammad. He used to work here. Is he still around?”

Dropping the name of someone in authority here, I thought to myself, worth a shot.

The guard ignored him.

Unable to find a picture of his ID on his phone, our host tried another approach.

“Can I leave anything with you as a pledge that I will return tonight? My phone? Anything?”

The guard shook his head. Alas, three traditional strategies seemed to have failed – the appeal to tribal reputation, the appeal to a relationship with an authority figure, and the attempt to leave something valuable as a pledge of keeping one’s word. No, at this checkpoint separating regions, ethnicities, and political factions, modernity and its demands for photo IDs seemed to be winning the day. And yet there’s enough of a tug of war between the modern ways and the older ways in this part of the world that you never can quite predict which one is going to prevail.

“Come inside and talk to the captain,” ordered the guard.

Our host, it seemed, had one last shot. If this didn’t work, he’d have to leave us and taxi alone back to the city we had just come from.

A few minutes later, he reemerged, smiling and relieved. Turns out the current authority figure at this checkpoint was willing – after enough honorable haggling, that is – to bend the newer laws in favor of the much older ones. The mustachioed men with AK-47s decided to take a risk on our ID-less host because they were able to socially map him, attaching him to a broader community that they had been taught they could trust. Because our host belonged to a certain group, a certain tribe with a solid reputation, he was extended trust, even though they knew almost nothing about him as an individual.

The ironic thing was that we were all worried we’d face trouble at the checkpoints because two of us were Americans. In the end, the soldiers seemed not to take any notice of us at all, fixated as they were on whether there was still enough credibility in the name of our host’s tribe to let our him through without proper ID.

“Thanks be to God for the reputation of the _____ tribe!” I said. “I think I need a tribe to adopt me.”

Our local friends smiled and chuckled. Of course, I could never really be adopted by a local tribe. The local worldview would never permit it. Bloodlines, fatherlines specifically, are still the be-all and end-all of identity here. Kinship is fixed by biology and viewed as largely unchangeable.

It was a curious thing that I had just that same day given a talk where I’d said this older strategy of tribal trust was actually keeping the country stuck, held back from the kind of trust between diverse individuals that leads to true and healthy progress. But here, this same sort of group trust had just made things easier, unstuck, at least for our little party with its simple mission of dropping us Americans off after a long day of conference activities.

I was reminded that there’s always a context for why a certain culture is the way it is. Even if certain traditions now seem hopelessly counterproductive, at one point they were adopted because they were needed, they worked, or they seemed the wisest of all the available options – perhaps the only option. Not unlike a counselor approaching relational strategies learned in childhood that are now causing havoc in an adult’s life, wise observers of culture should also be careful to give respect where it’s due. There are always reasons why certain habits or customs exist. These reasons may be good or they may be bad. But go deep enough and we will inevitably find that they have a logic to them, and often one that makes some decent sense.

There are reasons why our locals, now an overwhelmingly urban people, are still so tribal in their approach to trust. It was only a generation or two ago that the tribe was still everything, absolutely central to survival, let alone success. Your tribe protected you, arranged your marriage for you, and secured justice for you. Your tribe gave you your identity, an imputed reputation of honor and strength that meant you could navigate life with a name that carried weight, opened doors, and caused rivals to think twice before trying anything.

Of course, along with all of these benefits came solemn obligations. Show up to fight for the tribe when called. Advance the honor of the tribe through your own personal actions. Purge shameful members of the tribe when necessary. And yes, only truly trust those who belong to your tribe or to its close allies – never those who don’t.

Alas, now that our focus people group is 85% city dwellers, this old tribal strategy of trust is proving completely insufficient for the complex needs of 21st century life. Neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, governments, and even churches are now made up of those from different tribes. How do you effectively cooperate with others when the wisdom you’ve inherited is that you should never trust someone who’s not a tribal relative? How can any institution be healthy if you distrust almost everyone from the get-go, when the slightest mistake or sin by others simply proves what you already knew, that all these others are bad, untrustworthy types who are ultimately against you?

No, in spite of occasionally getting you through a government checkpoint, the dominance of the tribal trust approach is daily undermining just about everything in this society, not to mention the establishment of healthy local churches. This problem of trust, when manifested between local believers, is one of the toughest nuts to crack for cross-cultural workers in this part of the world. In general, the local believers are still operating in a default mindset related to tribal trust. “I only trust family and those I grew up with” is a sentiment I’ve heard countless times from local believers, usually in a conversation where I’m trying to convince them to risk by gathering with and trusting other brothers and sisters in the faith.

We’ve learned to leverage a local proverb about trust to push back against this, which usually buys us at least a good conversation about Christian trust and trustworthiness. And we’ve also learned that this is an area where we cannot afford to wait for the locals to feel ready to change. Those who have waited have found that locals’ willingness to trust others (which they pray is just around the corner) never actually materializes on its own. They then end up stuck in an ever-growing network of secret, one-on-one Bible studies with locals afraid of meeting with others. No, this is an area where missionaries need to very proactively lead in terms of modeling, exhorting, and even pushing toward diverse, non-oikos gatherings from the beginning. Practically, this means the believers we invest the most time with should be those who are most willing to risk gathering with others. If locals want to study the Bible with a foreigner, they should mainly be offered opportunities to do this which assume the presence of other locals.

This “throw them in the deep end” trust approach not only fits the messy Jew-Gentile-slave-free composite churches planted by the Apostles, but for us it has also proved unexpectedly effective – if you stubbornly stick with it for a few years. Turns out that once the first solid core of believers emerges (usually after a couple of implosions) that has learned it is possible to build trust with one another, then it becomes so much easier for those who come after them. Yes, it’s a tough ask to make of the locals, but it doesn’t take too long before they come to experience the benefits of something they previously thought impossible – the slow and steady growth of trust between believers who have no natural kinship ties, but are together becoming a new spiritual family. Unfortunately, decades’ worth of movement-driven methods here that make more allowance for locals’ fears of gathering with one another have so far failed to result in actual churches that last. Once again, our corner of Central Asia proves to be where all the popular missionary methods come to die.

Long-term, what is ultimately needed is a biblical renovation of the local worldview when it comes to trust, one that provides better tools for understanding trustworthiness. These tools can lead to Christian flourishing within the local church. Then, as the church leavens its host culture there is also the long-term possibility of broader societal flourishing as even those who don’t believe go on to learn a wiser way to trust others.

We should be wary of the assumption that the biblical understanding of trust is basically synonymous with the Western approach, even though the way Westerners trust one another has undoubtedly been deeply shaped by the Bible. Western trust has some real strengths in its overflowing optimism and risk-taking nature, strengths that do indeed echo biblical ideas of “hoping all things, believing all things.” But Western trust also assumes a general culture of honesty. Again, this assumption is probably there because of the Bible’s long-term influence on the West. But this posture of assumed trustworthiness does not work so well in other cultures that value honor or craftiness over honesty. Western trust defaults can therefore put the local church in other cultures at greater risk of attack from deceivers and wolf-types. No, we do not want Central Asian believers to merely start trusting one another as if they were Westerners. Rather, we want them to trust one another as people of the Word.

For a long time, I have been chewing on the question of where to start when it comes to building a biblical theology of trust. At last, I think I’ve arrived at some initial clarity, or at least spotted a few trailheads, as it were, that can eventually lead to a more biblical understanding of trust.

First, a biblical understanding of trust must begin putting one’s trust ultimately in God, and not in man (Ps 62:5-8). Like many other paradoxes in the Christian life, the best way to learn to trust others is to realize that you can’t ultimately trust them. Only God is worthy of 100% trust. Everyone else will, at some point, let us down. This is because we’re all sinners, and we’re all limited. Only God is perfectly holy and perfectly infinite in his reliability. When we put the weight of our deepest trust on God and not on other humans we’re actually then more free to risk and trust others – because we don’t ultimately depend on them, but on God. The book of Jeremiah goes so far as to say the one who trusts in man is cursed, while the one who trusts in God is blessed (Jer 17:5-7).

Second, a biblical understanding of trust must be shaped by the wisdom literature. Scripture doesn’t often use the term trustworthy for people. But it does use other terms that are related to it, terms such as wise, upright, righteous, and blessed. These are all characteristics that are upstream from trustworthiness. The wisdom literature in particular is full of proverbs and discourses on what it looks like to be this kind of person. For the one on the hunt for what constitutes biblical trustworthiness, the wisdom literature is a goldmine. Consider Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly; nor stands in the way of sinners; nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the Law of the Lord; and on his Law he meditates day and night.” Or, Proverbs 9:8, “Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; Reprove a wise man, and he will love you.” Or, Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” From these sample verses from wisdom passages we see that the trustworthy person is one who 1) is shaped by God’s word instead of being shaped by sinners, 2) happily receives correction, and 3) is merciful to others. Do you know someone like this? Chances are good you can trust them.

I also find it very interesting that the wisdom literature is so individualistic in its understanding of wisdom – and therefore trustworthiness. Ancient Israel was a tribal society and had a culture that was more collectivist than individualist, not unlike many Eastern cultures today. It could have very easily fallen into very unhealthy forms of tribal trust. In fact, some of the carnage in the book of Judges may be evidence of this. But whereas blessings and certain obligations are given out tribally, the wisdom literature zeros in not on the group but on the individual when it builds out its understanding of what is means to be wise, upright, righteous, blessed, trustworthy. This means a pivot toward assessing individuals’ trustworthiness rather than tribes’ is not a move toward becoming more Western, but toward becoming more biblical.

Third, a biblical understanding of trust must be shaped by the examples in the Bible’s narratives. Men like Joseph, Daniel, and Nehemiah, and women like Ruth are strong examples of what a trustworthy person looks like. In their stories, we see both competence and character, two key domains of trustworthiness when it comes to individuals. The stories of these faithful saints and others present us with real-life examples of what a trustworthy believer looks like, even under extreme pressure. The apex of all of these biblical examples is of course Jesus, the trustworthy human par excellence.

Fourth, a biblical understanding of trust must be shaped by the New Testament’s qualifications for leaders. The New Testament’s passages on elders and deacons (1 Tim 3, Titus 1, Acts 20, 1 Pet 5, Acts 6) set forward qualifications for leadership in the local church. As many have pointed out, there is nothing exceptional about these qualifications. Rather, they simply paint the picture of a believer who is mature enough to be able to lead God’s people well. As such, they are great standards for all believers to strive toward. But in addition to this, they also make a great framework for trustworthiness. Take the elder qualifications for 1st Timothy 3, for example. You can trust someone who longs to care for God’s people, is faithful to their spouse, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not a lover of money, who manages their household well, etc.

As I said above, these categories are an initial attempt to outline a biblical approach of trust. There are likely more ‘trailheads’ like these from Scripture that emerge as we dig deeper into this topic. But even starting with these four would help local believers – and let’s be honest, us Western missionaries too – think much more biblically about trust, rather than just going with the flow of our native cultures.

Tribal trust has been undermining the establishment of healthy churches in Central Asia (along with just about everything else in society). Therefore, local believers must learn how to move away from this binary group approach to trusting others where you are either ‘in the group’ and therefore viewed as completely trustworthy or ‘out of the group’ and so viewed basically as a saboteur waiting to pounce.

That being said, even tribal trust is not to be completely discarded according to the Bible. Let’s not forget Paul’s rather blunt generalizations about Cretans. And more importantly, if we observe the reputations of individual congregations in the New Testament (e.g. Col 1:4, Rev 2-3), we see there is still a way in which we can wisely bear a tribal name of sorts. And while belonging to a church with a sound reputation should not be the only or primary filter used for gauging someone’s trustworthiness, it sure is a helpful secondary category to lean on.

Yes, even though I can’t be adopted by a Central Asian tribe, I have over the years been adopted by several local spiritual ones. This reputation will not get me through government checkpoints (not yet, anyway). But, man, does it result in joy and trust with other brothers and sisters who have heard of the faithfulness of the different churches we’ve been members of. “You were members at _____ Baptist Church? We’ve heard of it. Solid preaching! And solid people.”

We may yet have a long way to go in building a biblical theology of trust. But by the grace of God, we are on our way. And once we and the local believers learn how to trust one another according to the Bible, well then, the gates of hell better watch out.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

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Ministry Is A Gift

In this video, one of the members of the Great Commission Council shares a perspective I also resonate deeply with. Yes, ministry is costly. But so much more than that, it is a gift.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.

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