It was the first time I’d ever been asked this question. And it wasn’t asked in jest, but in earnest. My new friend, Jonah*, really meant it.
“Of course!” I replied, “When Jesus forgives you he forgives you of all your sin, all your shame, all your mistakes, and all your background and past. His blood even covers all the sins you’re going to do in the future.”
Jonah took in my response. Then told me he was getting goosebumps.
This past Friday was Jonah’s first time attending a church, first time getting his hands on a Bible, and first time hearing the gospel. One day a foreigner on the bus next to him asked him to help him figure out how to pay. That foreigner was a Christian and a member of our international church. That was how Jonah showed up at the church that morning, and how he and I were then able to talk at the fellowship lunch that followed.
Like many here, Jonah is trilingual. His father is from our focus people group, his mother from a neighboring people group, and he also has decent English. Here, they don’t believe people can be biracial, so Jonah identifies fully with his father’s people group, even though he’s fluent in both tongues. While talking, he and I did the dance where we tried to figure out whether communication would be smoother and more natural in English or in the local language. We used both languages interchangeably for a while, but when we got to spiritual things we moved mostly into his ‘father tongue.’
After the post-service fellowship meal, held at a member’s house, the pattern here is to go around the room and to have everyone share one or two things they found encouraging from the service. I leaned over Red*, who was sitting between us, and whisper-explained the format to Jonah, who then scribbled some notes in Engish and passed them to me. He nervously wanted to make sure that what he had to share was appropriate.
He shared three things with the group. First, that this was his first time attending a church. Second, that he loved the joyful singing. “Sometimes there’s a kind of singing in the mosque, but it’s not happy, more like mourning.” And third, that he was shocked by a sentence he’d heard during the service – that Jesus died so that we might live.
Imagine being a thirty-something-year-old man and hearing this idea for the very first time. This was Jonah’s situation. When he heard this truth it left him stunned. Jonah then concluded his sharing by telling the group that he was ready to become a Christian and wanted to go as deep as possible in learning about Jesus.
“Well, first, start by reading your New Testament carefully,” I told him when he later expressed to me the same desire to become a Christian and go as deep in as he could.
I asked Jonah about his story and why he was so ready to follow Jesus despite knowing almost nothing about him. He told me that even as a child he had always felt that Islam was wrong. Then, one day during work he fell off of a three-storey building. This had somehow not killed him, despite the doctors believing he was done for. Here, he showed me the scars on his neck from where he had been intubated in a desperate effort to keep him alive.
“I know that Jesus saved my life,” Jonah said to me matter-of-factly.
I didn’t press him on how he knew this, instead deciding to press into the gospel. Like so many locals, Jonah seemed to have had some kind of experience of Jesus’ merciful power. In the beginning, they tend to think this makes them Christians. We know that it does not. What it does do is blast open a wide door for gospel proclamation.
I proceeded to walk through a basic God-Man-Christ-Response outline with Jonah, which he listened to with rapt attention. When I was talking about the need for repentance is when Jonah dropped his unexpected question about if Jesus was willing to forgive him for being a Muslim.
The way that Jonah listened to me as I shared the gospel reminded me of the first time Darius* heard the gospel years ago. Some need to hear the gospel a dozen times before they begin to feel its beauty and power. Others? They feel it right away. As if the thing they have been searching for all their life has suddenly and wonderfully been set before them. Initial response isn’t everything, but neither is it nothing. The natural man doesn’t find the gospel message compelling. Something is happening in Jonah.
I pray that this encouraging early response to the gospel is genuine, good-soil faith. Importantly, he’s agreed to meet up weekly with one of the leaders of our church who is a native speaker of his mother’s tongue. They’ll be walking through the book of Mark together.
Pray for Jonah to be faithful in this commitment to Bible study. The Lord knows where his heart is. If I had to guess, he may have just this week entered the kingdom. Or, he may be right on border, right on the cusp of the new birth. Yet these thing are mysterious, so it might turn out that he needs another six months. Pray regardless. If he does turn out to be a new brother, then I’ll be sure to let you know.
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
From the viewpoint of the empire the most troubling areas in Roman Asia were the two sore spots of Armenia and Judaea. Armenia was the focus of unending trouble with Persia. It had always been more oriental than Greek or Roman. Traditionally, despite its fierce pride in its own independence, it had come to be regarded as a fief of the Parthian emperor’s second son, and thus it was at first more a Persian than a Roman client-kingdom. Rome began to claim it as part of its own sphere of influence after a Roman victory in 69. B.C., in the days of the Republic, but only after three hundred years of tug-of-war between Rome and Persia did it finally turn Western, and then as much because of Western Christianity as of Roman power. Christian merchants are said to have been the first to introduce the new faith into the kingdom, but the “apostle to Armenia” was the great Gregory the Illuminator, who converted the Armenian king, Tiridates I (261-317) around the end of the third century. All Armenia, it is said, quickly became at least nominally Christian a decade or two before the conversion of Constantine. For this reason Armenia is often called the first Christian nation, though such a claim, as we shall see, must be qualified.
-Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. I, pp. 8-9
Just tonight while having dinner with some Iranian believers I heard them use the term Gregorian Orthodox when referring to the ethnic Armenian Christians of their homeland. When they said this, I wondered which Gregory was being referred to. Well, it seems this would be him, Gregory the Illuminator, the one whose ministry led to the official Christianization of Armenia. However, let’s not forget the brave Christian merchants who were the true pioneers and ‘apostles’ of Christianity in that land who undoubtedly prepared the ground for Gregory’s later success.
The other ancient kingdom claiming the title of ‘first Christian nation’ would be Osrhoene, another small client state constantly fought over by Rome and Persia. Its capital was the city of Edessa, in modern-day şanliurfa, Turkey. It’s interesting to note that it was not Rome that first attempted the merger of Christianity and the state. Rather, it was these two minor border kingdoms, one of which most have never even heard of.
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.
The rental car employee behind the desk looked strangely like a Central Asian Laurence Fishburne. And he spoke with a similar self-assurance. I half expected him to pull out some colored pills and start telling me about the nature of reality.
“But I need my passport to travel between cities,” I countered.
“Inshallah they will accept your residency card instead. But in order to rent a car, you must leave your passport with us here. Otherwise, the police will penalize us. You’ll get it back next week when you bring the car back.”
I shot a questioning look at my wife. She shrugged with resignation and sipped her chai, signaling that she’d be happy to let me make the call on this one.
Leaving your passport overnight with someone else is never a good idea in a region like ours. The normally stable security situation might suddenly spiral out of control, calling for a quick evacuation. In fact, even as we sat in the car rental office on that sunny afternoon, missiles had just the previous week cut through the sky directly above our city, en route from one country to another as they took turns hitting each other in another round of geopolitical saving face.
But all indications on the ground were that our security status quo would continue. And we needed to get our son to his first ever Discipleship Now gathering happening for expat teens several hours away in Poet City*. Worst case scenario, my family could fly out of the country without me while I tracked down rental car Morpheus to get my passport back as the country melted down.
In this whole exchange, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time I’d been required to leave my passport overnight in order to check out a library book. Yes, a library book. If you’ve never thanked God for the common grace that causes people to return rental cars and library books, you probably should. Because when this common grace is absent from a society, they will go to extreme measures to guarantee you bring their stuff back.
Years ago, the government of our region conducted a rather controversial referendum when every other government told them not to. So, to punish them for going ahead with it, the rest of the other governments did their best to lock our region down. Airports were closed, borders sealed, and Shia militias massed nearby preparing for a potential invasion. One border crossing remained open, plus one air route through an unfriendly airport that included a substantial fine. So, we still technically had two ways out if needed (when it gets down to only one way out, that’s usually the trigger for an evac). Things went on like this for a good several months, and thankfully, never got any worse. The Shia militia, for example, never came to town, in spite of Mercenary Dan’s* dire predictions and attempts to sell me armed evacuation transport.
In the end, diplomacy seems to have worked out an uneasy resolution. Its effect was such that ever since that time our region has been weaker, less prosperous, and less functional, but still mostly free and peaceful. Compared to war or invasion, that’s not a bad outcome. However, during the crisis itself, things got pretty sketchy there for a while. It was not a time to go without your passport – especially not for a library book.
But here was my dilemma. I had to write a term paper for a class I was taking online called History and Religion of Islam. It was an excellent class, even though it had a very heavy workload. For example, we had to read Ibn Ishaq’s massive official biography of Muhammad in only one week. I would not recommend this. If you’re working with Muslims, this is an important book to be familiar with, but please, be kind to yourself and read it over the course of several weeks or months.
For my term paper, I had settled on the topic of the Islamic conquest of our people group. Search as I might, I could not find a single book or even article in English that addressed this historical event. Much of this has to do with the identity of our people group. Even though they were definitely around back then, and in great numbers, they were a seminomadic mountain people. Authors tend to write history about the civilized cities in the plains and the majority people groups, not the nomadic minorities. No, the sources were almost nonexistent, so to put together a narrative of the conquest I would need to find a sentence in a chapter here, a paragraph in a book there. To do this, I would need to make use of Poet City’s public library.
Poet City is known as a city of writers. And in fact, the culture of writing, selling, buying, and discussing books is strong. But this does not mean that it has a good library. Something has gone wrong in the culture such that the same locals who would never steal cash from the overflowing money changers’ tables in the bazaar would steal a book from the library. Perhaps it is because the library is viewed as an impersonal institution rather than an entity connected to one’s relational network (thus requiring more honorable conduct). Because of this, the library is a neglected, distrustful place.
However, I had heard that there was a small English section, one which might include books about our area’s history. Upon visiting one afternoon, I found it. It was dusty, tucked away in a side area that few seemed to visit. But I couldn’t have been more excited. There were several books written by local historians that had been translated into English. These were books you couldn’t find online. The only way to read them was the old-fashioned way, by getting ahold of a rare physical copy. I had found gold.
It was when I went to figure out the checkout process that I discovered they wanted to confiscate my passport.
“No one is allowed to check out a book unless they leave us their national ID card or passport.”
“Uh, really? Why is that?”
“So that the books don’t get stolen.”
“I’m not going to steal the books. Isn’t there anything else I can leave? My phone number, my address?”
“No, dear, we will only accept your passport.”
“But you know we are in a security crisis. We are foreigners. We might be told to leave the country at any moment. And for that, I’ll need my passport.”
The librarian stared at me, not impressed with my argument.
“OK,” I continued, “where is the passport kept?”
“Here, in the library.”
“What if we are told to leave at night after the library is closed? Could I come and get my passport?”
“No, you would have to wait until the next morning to get it back.”
“I’m so surprised by all of this. There must be another way.”
“You can talk to the library director,” the librarian said, “but he will not agree to let you take a book out unless you give us your passport as a pledge.”
In the end, the library director and I were able to work out a compromise. He would keep my passport in his personal briefcase and take it home with him at night. We would exchange phone numbers. In case of emergency, I could call him in the middle of the night to return the books to him and get my passport back. This arrangement might seem even more sketchy to a Westerner than leaving it in the library. But in Central Asian culture, I sensed that making this kind of personal arrangement with the director actually moved things into more reliable honor-shame obligation territory, and out of the territory of institution and policy where locals might excuse themselves from any responsibility if it happened to be inconvenient.
Still, it was far from ideal. And I was pretty sure that if my teammates were in the country, they would never go for it. But we were on our own for this stretch of the crisis, so we would need to muddle along through the different risks as best we could.
Now, it probably says something about how much of a history nerd I am that I would take this kind of risk. But I have to say, it was totally worth it. How so? Well, one of those books contained the only local account of the Islamic conquest ever discovered.
The Arabs devastated the valley* Abducted girls and women Massacred the heroes Extinguished the fire altars
This stanza of a longer poem of lament was discovered about a hundred years ago on a pottery shard in a farmer’s field. Written in an older form of our people group’s language, and using an old Christian alphabet, it’s the only known source from our people group from the period when they were conquered by the Islamic invasions of the mid-600s. All the other sources are written by the victors in official Islamic histories of the conquest a couple hundred years later, such as the accounts of the famous Islamic historian Al-Tabari. But this source that I stumbled upon was not only local, written by the conquered, but it was probably written much closer to the events themselves as well.
In contrast to the common narrative among our people group that they converted to Islam peacefully, these lines of verse tell a different story. According to this source, the Islamic invasions resulted in the devastation of their home areas. Women and girls were carried off as sex slaves. Defending soldiers were slaughtered. And the local Zoroastrian fire temples were destroyed.
The existence of this kind of local witness is quite a remarkable thing. It confirms what the Islamic sources later say. The conquest wasn’t peaceful. It was jihad. It was a bloodbath. And there it was, hidden away in an obscure book in a neglected library.
I spent that evening at home skimming the books I had checked out and taking pictures of the pages that I needed for my paper. Then, first thing in the morning, I rushed back to the library to return the books and get my passport back. The library director seemed surprised that I was back for it so soon. But for my part, I was not wanting to extend our risky arrangement any more than was absolutely necessary. Having accomplished the goal of the risk, it was now time to return to safer ground.
It was not too long after this that we found ourselves suddenly crossing the last remaining land border and making good use of those passports. A family wedding provided a good reason to get out of the pressure cooker, even if only temporarily.
Among our other activities during our three weeks in the US, we quickly applied for second passports. The laws in our host country were shifting and it looked like we’d have to send off our passports for a month or two to get a new kind of residency visa. But having two passports for each member of our family would mean we could do this and still be able to travel at a moment’s notice if needed.
And, just in case, if we needed to safely check out a library book or rent a car? Well, then we could do that too.
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
In the 1800s, most missionaries who worked in the Muslim world worked among the ethnic Christians of the region. The theory was if these spiritually-dead ‘Christian’ communities were reawakened and genuinely came to faith in Jesus, then the gospel would flow from them and penetrate the majority Muslim community. Sadly, this compelling theory proved to be completely wrong. The historic animosity and barriers between the minority Christians and the majority Muslims instead prevented the gospel and church plants from flowing from one community into the other. This was true even though the minority community was fluent both in their native Christian languages (Armenian, Syriac, etc.) and in the language of the Muslim majority (Persian, Turkish, Arabic). There were encouraging exceptions now and then, but largely, the original theory was based on a wrong assumption, that missionary engagement with a minority language group would lead to the majority language group also being reached.
Today, a kind of reversal of this story is taking place. Many are assuming that our unengaged minority people groups can be reached by missionaries focusing on the majority language groups.
Specifically, the unengaged people groups of our region keep getting passed over by both large organizations who want to ‘maximize their impact’ as well as by the small number of specialized missionaries explicitly trained to learn two languages in order to church plant among such minority groups. On paper, it makes sense. Most, if not all, of the members of our area’s minority language groups can clearly understand the gospel in one of the more dominant regional languages. This is because they have grown up as minorities needing to be fluent in a national or regional language in order to go to school, do business, and navigate government processes. Were someone from these minority groups to come to faith, the thought is that they could then join a church that worships in one of the majority languages that they know.
With this kind of bilingualism or trilingualism being the long-term situation on the ground, our minority language groups get categorized as having access to the gospel – and therefore not as urgently in need of missionaries as those minority groups that cannot clearly understand the gospel in the languages of their neighbors. There is a clear logic to this ‘triage of lostness’ that I do not completely disagree with. Those who can understand the gospel in another language because they are bilingual or trilingual are not in the same situation as those who cannot currently hear the gospel in any language they can understand.
However, I believe there is a faulty assumption that comes along with this valid distinction. And that assumption is that because the minority group can speak the majority language(s), the gospel and even church plants will then actually flow from the majority group and into the minority communities. Essentially, the assumption is that fluency or near-fluency in a dominant language means the primary barrier to the gospel for these minority groups has been removed. So, if missionaries are present planting churches in the majority language, then the outworking of this assumption is that this is sufficient for passing over these minority language groups. They will be reached, eventually, through the dominant languages.
It’s a sound theory, but alas, it doesn’t hold up on the ground. At least not in our corner of Central Asia. I wish this weren’t the case. But we must work with the lost as they are, and not with the lost as we wish they would be, nor as we thought they would be back when we were in training.
Unfortunately, the witness of decades of gospel work here has shown that apparent access to the gospel through majority languages itself doesn’t remove the necessary barriers keeping churches from taking root among these minority groups. It removes one barrier, yes, but there are apparently other barriers in place that keep the gospel from penetrating these minority groups in a significant way. This means that the ability to clearly understand the gospel in a majority language should not be used as the only or primary filter for considering whether certain groups should receive missionaries who learn their language or not.
What will it take to reach these minority groups? The same thing it has taken to plant churches among our focus people group (itself a minority group in its country, but big enough to be a dominant language group compared to these smaller language communities I’m discussing). What is needed is a long-term commitment to engage a people group in the language that is closest to its identity. This helps answer the objection that some of these groups are functioning as if they have two heart languages. Sure, they may be fluent in two or three languages. But only one of them bears their name. And for most of these members of minority language groups, the language that bears their name is still the language they dream in, talk to their spouse in, curse in, and pray desperate prayers in.
The missionary who does the hard thing and learns that tongue (often in addition to learning one of the majority languages – probably 6-8 years of labor) will find himself doing ministry with greater power, skill, and trust than were he to simply do ministry in the majority language. Yes, to learn someone’s mother tongue when no one from the outside has ever learned it before gives you serious power in conversation, and I use that term intentionally. This is a natural power in communication that the Spirit can then also infuse with spiritual power when he sees fit. If you have ever learned even a phrase or two in a minority tongue then you know what I am talking about (or if you’ve ever been stuck in a foreign land and experienced the immense relief that comes over you when someone addresses you in good English). Along with power comes skill, the ability to speak clearly and compellingly in the intimate language a person uses with their parents, their lover, and their children. And with all of this comes trust. After all, by learning this tongue no one else will take the time to learn you have led with an incredible display of honor, respect, even love – and that for a language that is usually ignored, suppressed, or mocked. The locals will come to trust you and share their secrets with you in a different way than if your relationship was only in the majority language. You have learned their heart language, so they’re more likely to entrust their heart to you. This is simply the way humans work.
So, what are the barriers preventing the gospel from naturally flowing from our majority language groups to our minority language groups? Well, as we’ve established already, it’s not the lack of a shared language. The minority groups are fluent in the majority languages. Rather, there seems to be a complex web of factors that prevent our good theory from working in reality, that prevent the gospel and churches from taking root in these communities. These interlocking barriers would be things like majority-minority identity preservation, distrust and animosity between communities, and the fact that seeing a church in your neighbor’s language and culture might not actually convince you that this Jesus thing is actually an option for people like you.
If none of your ancestors have ever believed in Jesus, then this last barrier often requires a peculiar kind of demonstration. Often, it requires a Jesus follower from the outside entering into your language and culture and awkwardly attempting to model all this for you. “God knows your language and he knows and loves your people, my friend,” they will try to tell you in your mother tongue, while probably butchering the grammar of that sentence. This, believe it or not, can have a similar effect to having witnessed some kind of miracle.
We may feel like we can cross minority language groups off the list if they can hear the gospel in the majority languages of their country. But at least for our area of Central Asia, this would be a tragic mistake. These groups have been bilingual or trilingual for hundreds of years and not lost their distinct ethnic and linguistic (and sometimes religious) identities. They aren’t going away anytime soon. And they aren’t being reached ‘downstream’ from the work being done in the majority languages. No, it’s going to take something much more proactive, intentional, and downright stubborn for churches to be planted among these minority groups.
We need gospel laborers. We need trailblazers. Those who are willing to question missiological laws and ask the hard questions about why solid theories aren’t actually proving true on the ground. Eight years of your life to learn two languages is totally worth it if it means churches planted among a language group that has never before had gospel witness in its own culture and tongue.
Unreached language groups can be reached. But the best way to do this is by preaching the gospel to them in their own language, not in the language of their more powerful neighbors. This is true even if they are bilingual and even if they say you don’t have to. Learn that unknown tongue. See what the Lord does with that sacrificial labor. It will be so hard. And it will be so worth it.
If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can do so here.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
In 1799, Ward and Marshman arrived as teammates for William Carey. They quickly formed a local church together in the city of Serampore. Later, when Krishna Pal became the first local believer, he also joined this small church plant, eventually serving there as a deacon. The instinct of this pioneer missionary team was, first, that they themselves needed to be part of a local church even while they labored hard to reach the locals. No local church yet existed, so they formed one. Notice that they did not wait until a local came to faith to form a church. Nor did they set up some kind of parachurch structure for themselves for weekly worship while retaining their church memberships back in England.
Fast forward to today. A missionary team from Latin America serves in our region of Central Asia. Before they were kicked out and moved to our current city, they served several years in a difficult and conservative town up in the mountains. During their time there, they asked their organization to send them a Spanish-speaking pastor who would live in their city and provide pastoral care for their families. This team, like those in Serampore 225 years ago, instinctually pursued a local church structure for themselves (an in-person pastor, though not a full fledged church), even while they labored hard to reach the locals and plant churches among them.
I point out the instincts of these Serampore and Latino teams because they are not the instincts of your average Western missionary on the field today. Rather than forming a local church for themselves or joining one, the most common approach of today’s Western missionary is to bypass local church in favor of what I’ll call Weekly Missionary Chapel.
The Blindspot
What is Weekly Missionary Chapel? Essentially, it is when a missionary team or missionaries from partner teams gather weekly to fellowship, pray, worship, and engage God’s word together through teaching, preaching, or group discussion. These missionaries most often retain their membership in their sending churches back home, so Weekly Missionary Chapel provides a vital place for their weekly in-person Christian encouragement. It is flexible, efficient, simple to pull off, easily reproducible, and can be done as long as necessary while missionaries remain on the field.
Sounds great, right? What could be wrong with busy missionaries gathering weekly for something encouraging and so quintessentially Christian like this? I myself had seasons of deep encouragement as a single on the field in this very kind of context. Well, as our locals say when they have to be the bearers of bad news, “chuffed by a pot of grape leaves ‘astuffed.” I’m convinced that the dominance of Weekly Missionary Chapel as a model for missionaries is actually doing a good deal of harm – and that it is one of the greatest blindspots of Western missionaries today.
This is, perhaps, a surprising claim. But what follows are nine dangers that I and a minority of other concerned missionaries see when our friends on the field bypass the local church in favor of Weekly Missionary Chapel.
1 – Weekly Missionary Chapel does not constitute a biblical church, even if it sometimes feels like one. Though Christians may differ on what exactly constitutes a local church according to the Bible, serious believers should agree that 1) there is a line somewhere that separates a group Bible study from a legit church, and 2) that line should be determined by the Bible. Missionaries are not always required to wrestle with the Bible’s ecclesiological minimum (the point at which the minimum ingredients are in place for a group to cross the line whereby it can biblically be called a church), but they should be. Especially if they are church planters. How are we going to start something healthy for the locals if we can’t even define it and name it according to the Bible ourselves?
Instead, far too many missionaries use the house churches of the New Testament to cover for the fact that they really can’t really define what a church is. “We do team worship because they did church in homes in the New Testament.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully convinced that contemporary house churches can be biblical churches. But to do this, they need to do more than gather weekly for fellowship, prayer, worship, and time in the Word. Rather, Christians have long held (and I agree) that the New Testament requires the right administration of the Lord’s Supper and Baptism to qualify as a local church, as well as some kind of sacred mutual identity, commitment, and accountability to one another (often summarized as covenant and membership).
There are central things that constitute the minimum for a group to be a church, and to be called such. It might not be a healthy or mature church yet, but once it has these core ingredients it can now appropriately make the linguistic shift from group to church. It might not have elders yet, it may not have missions yet, it may not have organized systems of giving or membership or discipline. But I believe it can legitimately be called a church if it has the characteristics of the newborn church in Acts 2 – word, prayer, fellowship, baptism, Lord’s supper, evangelism, discipleship, caring for members’ needs, and the necessary inside-outside distinction required to be and continue as an actual spiritual family – “the Lord added to their number day by day” (Acts 2:41-47).
Weekly Missionary Chapel, on the other hand, does not have some of the basic Acts 2 ingredients, the bare minimum necessary components to count as a local church. In particular, these weekly gatherings on the mission field often lack the Lord’s supper and baptism. And they almost always lack the sacred self-identity/mutual commitment piece. In fact, many are intentionally aiming not to be a local church.
When Weekly Missionary Chapel replaces the local church for missionaries, it’s not unlike a couple that decides to live together without getting married. Quite a few of the functions and benefits of marriage are there, but without the sacred commitment that comes along with real marriage as recognized by God. Something very important and honorable has been skipped. Sadly, Weekly Missionary Chapel is the kind of blindspot that causes the same evangelicals who plead with their relatives to get married rather than cohabitate to then themselves do something similar with the bride of Christ in their own mission field community.
This first danger is important to point out because there is no class of Christian who is justified in remaining voluntarily separate from the local church (Heb 10:25). But when missionaries attend Weekly Missionary Chapel long-term rather than forming or joining an actual local church, they are doing just that – ignoring a form of weekly obedience required of all believers everywhere, regardless of calling, gifting, or ministry. When it comes to the need to be united to the local church, missionaries often act like we are an exception to the rule. We are not. Whenever possible, we need to be joined to an actual local church. If one doesn’t exist, then, like William Carey and his team, we need to do that most basic of missionary activities and form one.
2 – Weekly Missionary Chapel does not model what locals should do. Whenever possible, missionaries should be visible examples for locals of faithful Christian living. This includes both how we live as individuals as well as how we live in community. But when missionaries sidestep the local church in favor of Weekly Missionary Chapel they find themselves in the awkward position of modeling one thing for the locals even while they try to train them to do something else.
Every aspect of biblical church missing from a given Weekly Missionary Chapel is another aspect of Christian life that the locals will not see modeled by their missionary mentors – if they are allowed to see anything at all (see more on this below). Without seeing it lived out, it’s far more difficult for locals to obey what they are being taught from the word. This is true even if the locals trust the missionaries so much that they are willing to do what they say, but not what they do.
The Bible is clear. Ministry by example is the norm for faithfulness to transfer from one generation of disciples to the next (Phil 3:17). If missionaries want the locals to be faithful members of local churches that then go on to plant other churches, then they should be modeling this themselves.
This modeling principle is so fundamental to missions that it’s hard to understand how this disconnect exists for so many missionaries. But exist it does, hence why I use ‘blindspot’ for this issue. Again, here it seems that we missionaries feel that we are in a special category and that we don’t need to consistently model on the field what we teach – at least when it comes to church.
3 – Weekly Missionary Chapel does not provide adequate pastoral care. In most Weekly Missionary Chapels, there is no team of pastors or elders. Instead, different missionaries share the leadership responsibilities for the different activities that take place. While a missionary may sign up to preach a sermon or to lead worship, or be part of a planning team, none of them view themselves or are viewed by others as the spiritual shepherds of the other missionaries who participate. If the team leader is put in that role, then this is another problem, one we’ll address below. In Weekly Missionary Chapel, the missionaries involved don’t tend to wrestle with the weight of having to give an account for souls entrusted to them. Instead, everyone participates as an individual believer. Yes, there is often voluntary spiritual care for one another that takes place, but there’s also plenty of room to stay out of messy investment in other expats because after all, “we didn’t come here for the foreigners.”
In addition to this, many missionaries are not wired and gifted to be pastors. Missionaries tend to be evangelists, visionaries, strategic thinkers, risk-takers, pioneers, and starters. These are amazing gifts, but they are not the gifts of a steady, long-term shepherd whose eyes are first for the sheep entrusted to him and only after that for the lost sheep scattered out on the mountainsides. Missionaries committed to Weekly Missionary Chapel usually have their eyes primarily on those lost sheep and not the other foreigners they worship with. This can change, and missionaries can at times serve as faithful pastors to one another, but it requires an intentional commitment and formal organization that most missionaries would rather not be burdened by. They feel that have enough ministry on their hands without this added load.
But what about getting pastoral care from the sending church? Missionaries might tell themselves that they can get adequate pastoral care via the internet from their pastors back home, but this is wishful thinking. While helpful as a backup, pastoring through a computer screen will never compare to the kind of life-on-life shepherding possible from a man who is called and gifted to pastor God’s people. Video calls are an amazing technology, but they should not replace face-to-face spiritual family.
Missionaries are still Christians. And Christians need to live under the care of pastors whenever possible. Missionaries show that they instinctively know this by submitting again to the leadership of in-person pastors whenever they’re on furlough, even if they tend to live differently while on the field. Once again, we missionaries assume that because this access to face-to-face pastoral care is sometimes not possible for us (in pioneer church planting situations or high security areas, for example), we have now become exceptions where we should avoid it even in the many places where it is possible. And even if we are willing to become temporary pastors for locals on the field, rare is the missionary who will be willing to do this for other foreigners.
4 – Weekly Missionary Chapel excludes outsiders along unbiblical lines. If you want to make many a missionary squirm, ask them if your local friend who is studying the Bible with you can participate in team worship this week. This is because many Weekly Missionary Chapels are closed meetings open only to a specific missionary team. In this case, membership in a team has become the qualification for the weekly gathering with God’s people. Others might be open only to those who work for the same NGO or who are part of a group of partner teams. Often, the stated or unstated rule is that this is a gathering only for the missionaries, not for the locals.
What exactly is the biblical basis for excluding other believers (or genuine seekers) from the weekly gathering of believers based on team, occupation, or ethnicity? If the answer is that Weekly Missionary Chapel is not a local church, then we are back to point one. Why are these missionaries not obeying Jesus by being part of a local church? If it is meant to be a church, then there must be a mechanism for welcoming in outsiders, even in the most security-sensitive areas. A church that will not welcome in other believers or genuine seekers is a mutant thing, like some kind of body grown in on itself. The New Testament knows of no such gatherings (1 Cor 14:23-24). But the mission field is full of them.
But what about the language differences and the need for locals to form their own churches? Language is indeed a valid reason to form separate churches. But often, Weekly Missionary Chapels remain a missionary-only affair long after those missionaries are proficient in the local tongue. What is the reason for this? It’s not language. And while the end goal is indeed for locals to form their own churches, then why if one does not exist is it the common default to leave the local isolated while the foreigners have their own encouraging weekly get-together without them? As our locals say, there’s a hair in that yogurt, something is off here.
5 – Weekly Missionary Chapel reinforces blindspots and lopsided gifting. I really enjoy hanging out with other missionaries because we have so much in common. Few people can understand where I’m coming from like another missionary. But that’s also the same reason why I don’t want to be in a church only made up of other missionaries, whenever possible. We think similarly, we live similarly, we even dress similarly (If you doubt this last point you need to start paying better attention in international airports. There is a demographic ‘uniform’ of sorts and once you see it you can’t unsee it).
The fact is, when I am in a room made up of only other missionaries, that is a room of lopsided gifting and shared blindspots. We may all love evangelism, but that might also mean we’re all weak in the kinds of gifts that make a good deacon. For every overlap in our strengths, there’s a corresponding overlap in our weaknesses. A normal local church balances out the gifts of the body (1 Cor 12). But a church made up of only missionaries is like a hand with 5 thumbs – something unnatural.
There is a reason so many missionaries on the field have no issues with doing Weekly Missionary Chapel for years on end without ever joining or forming a local church together. We all think alike. And this means we are handicapped in our ability to see our shared blindspots, let alone challenge them. Missionaries are great at seeing the blindspots of their home culture and the culture they’ve come to serve. But we have a very hard time seeing the blindspots of our own missionary culture. For our own spiritual health, then, we need to be members of local churches with those who are not like us.
6 – Weekly Missionary Chapel creates unhealthy systems of accountability. Say a missionary is having a tense disagreement with his team leader about a missions strategy decision. That is a team/work issue. But what happens when the team leader is also functioning as the undefined spiritual authority of the Weekly Missionary Chapel and seeks to make it a spiritual church-ish issue also? And what if the missionary has retained his membership in his sending church back home and his pastors back there disagree with the team leader’s call?
It’s easy to see how quickly the complex lines of authority that every missionary deals with get even more muddled when there is not a healthy distinction between team and church, employment and church membership. Weekly Missionary Chapel departs from the clearer lines of spiritual authority that are present when a believer is a member of a local church. It introduces vague and therefore unhealthy overlapping systems of accountability between missionaries on the field.
This all means that missionaries and organizations on the field are prone to overstep their spiritual authority – and to do so in inconsistent and unpredictable ways – because Weekly Missionary Chapel creates a vacuum of clear spiritual leadership. By refusing to become an actual local church, the Weekly Missionary Chapel has set itself up for lots of messy and muddled conflicts.
7 – Weekly Missionary Chapel leads to conflict on the field. Building on the previous point, Weekly Missionary Chapel contributes to the stunning amount of hurtful conflicts between missionaries on the field. I continue to be amazed at the kinds of fallings-out that missionaries have with one another. Part of this is spiritual warfare – but part of it is also a structural issue.
By opting for Weekly Missionary Chapel, missionaries are trying to be everything for one another. And no matter how healthy our little team or network of missionaries is, it’s not a strong enough structure to take that kind of pressure. Missionaries are coworkers with one another and professionally accountable and dependent on one another. But we are often also one another’s functional family and friend group while on the field. We do holidays and birthdays together and are ‘aunts’ and ‘uncles’ for one another’s kids. Add to this that we are often colleagues working together at a platform – English teaching or medical professionals, for example. Then we want to add that we should be church for one another, but without the strength of any kind of covenant commitment. This is a recipe for disaster.
A stronger, clearer, and frankly, larger structure is needed to handle the enormous amounts of pressure and stress that missionaries live with. When missionaries join local churches, then this broader and more diverse community can help bear their burdens far better than a Weekly Missionary Chapel. Many of us missionaries know the value of friendships with other missionaries who are not with our own organization, how this kind of relationship can be a vital pressure-release valve. What we don’t realize is that the local church can do an even better job of this. Weekly Missionary Chapel, on the other hand, cannot take the pressure. With its overwhelming degree of overlap and its lack of covenant commitment to one another, it’s simply not strong enough. The conflicts of an intense life-on-life ‘marriage’ of sorts are there, but none of the promises. No wonder messy break-ups keep happening.
8 – Weekly Missionary Chapel prioritizes short-term efficiency over long-term effectiveness. There are times when our choices as Westerners expose our underlying worldview and culture, when we bend over to do some heavy lifting and the metaphorical underpants start showing. This is very much the case when Western missionaries choose Weekly Missionary Chapel over joining or forming a local church. Western missionaries are nothing if not goal-oriented, efficiency-loving, time-saving, project-accomplishing ninjas. This is why we’re so busy. It’s also why so many locals on the field feel like they are our projects, rather than our friends. This cultural wiring comes with some real upsides, but the downsides and blindspots are very real also.
Sadly, this mission-driven part of our wiring sometimes causes us to bypass crucially important things when we feel they take up too much time. This is often what is going on with Weekly Missionary Chapel. Missionaries have an enormous task on their hands that includes language learning, local relationships, government red tape, and the messiness of trying to plant local churches. Their time is precious. So, in order to protect their effectiveness to reach their goals, they cut out meaningful membership in a local church. Weekly Missionary Chapel, on the other hand, asks very little of the missionary. It feels like a far more efficient structure in a season where there’s not enough time and relational capacity to go around.
Weekly Missionary Chapel promises to protect the missionary’s laser-focus on his task by not asking him to be a part of members meetings, by not asking him to build relationships with other believers not connected to his goal, and by not asking him to serve in children’s church. The assumption is that these are all good things for normal Christians, but for the missionary they are distractions keeping him back from his higher calling.
The problem is many missionaries don’t understand that the slower path of meaningful investment in a local church while on the field actually leads to greater long-term effectiveness. We will be more effective long-term because we are not bypassing the Lord’s means of grace for his people, the weekly assembly full of diverse brothers and sisters. We will be more effective long-term because we will be modeling and living that faithfulness is not just about the end, but about themeans as well. We will be more effective because our posture will be one of continually honoring the bride of Christ, even when it’s costly. And we will be more effective because God will always honor that investment in his bride in unexpected and delightful ways.
Right now my family is building a friendship with a family from Zimbabwe that are members at the international church. They are here because the husband is an accountant and we’ve hit it off in part because our kids are becoming such good friends. At this point, I have no idea how investing in this friendship will come back around to help our work with Central Asians. But I trust that, somehow, it will. It would not be unlike God at all to use my African brother the accountant to unlock the key to breakthrough here.
9 – Weekly Missionary Chapel is often cloaked in a false belief that Westerners contaminate Indigenous churches.I’ve written about this in detail before, so here I’ll just summarize. Many missionaries feel they should not do church with the locals because by their very presence they will contaminate everything and ruin the possibility of contextual multiplying churches. In fact, these fears are an over-reaction that comes out of our unique position as Westerners in a post-Colonial world. It sounds and feels humble, but this posture actually prevents the Westerner from doing the kind of direct ministry by example that is so needed by his local friends – and that is commanded in the Bible.
We need to watch out for how our fears and the right goal of planting indigenous multiplying churches can serve as a smokescreen for sidestepping the local church.
The Lord Will Provide
Like Carey, Ward, and Marshman in 1899, our instinct should be to form or join a local church as soon as we can on the mission field. The choice of so many to do Weekly Missionary Chapel instead is not a neutral decision. It’s causing harm, both to missionaries and to the locals they are seeking to reach. It’s time we raise the alarm and help the global missionary community be able to see this pervasive blindspot.
Weekly Missionary Chapel may not be a local church, but it can very easily become one. All it requires is some biblical clarity, some intentionality, and some investment. Yes, investment is necessary, both on the front end and for the long-term, whether forming a new church out of our missionary team or joining a local church that already exists. But don’t be afraid of that. God will provide whatever resources you feel you don’t have so that you are able to honor and invest in his church.
Dear brothers and sisters on the mission field, you have risked so much for the sake of Jesus’ name among the nations. Now, do it again. Leave the seemingly-safe investment in Weekly Missionary Chapel and instead risk again by starting or joining a local church. Trust the great rewarder with whatever costs you incur. And then see what he does for those who risk for his bride.
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.
Today we were voted back in as members of the international church here in Caravan City. What a joy it was to be officially joined again to this body of believers after almost four years away.
Like many international churches, our new/old church family is quite diverse. We have over twenty nationalities represented in the membership, coming from a very broad range of socioeconomic situations. Among the most impoverished of our members would be the migrant workers who come from Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa. Many work grueling hours for low pay, enduring slave-like treatment from local employers, paying higher visa fees and navigating more government red tape and corruption than we do, all while living a continent away from their spouses and children whom they work so hard to support.
I have often been thankful for the chance to be in covenant with these brothers and sisters. Their situation is so different from that of us Western missionaries. It’s also quite different from that of the local believers. When I hear of their faithfulness I am often taken aback – and reminded of things that I might otherwise miss were I only in fellowship with Western missionaries and Central Asians. Some missionaries here might feel that church relationships with migrant workers are a distraction from the work they have been sent to do. But I have often found it instead to be an unexpected source of encouragement and perspective.
This week, I was in conversation with another missionary here about patronage expectations from local believers. He asked my thoughts about the many local believers who say they don’t attend church because they can’t afford the taxi fare, instead hinting that the church leaders should cover the transportation costs for them.
I told him that we’ve often heard the same thing, but that locals will indeed pay taxi fare without grumbling for the weekly gatherings they prioritize. This was something we observed early on as we experimented with weekly English groups. At the time, our believing local friends would sacrifice to attend these groups in order to improve their English. But they wouldn’t show up for a house church meeting. At the end of the day, paying the taxi fare to come to church wasn’t an issue of means, but an issue of priorities and discipleship.
“But maybe the church could offer some kind of partial help,” I offered, “where if they pay the fare to the church meeting, then the church can help with the taxi fare back to their homes afterward. That way locals would still have some skin in the game.”
“That might work,” said my friend, “But then you have the example of the Pakistani brothers.”
“Why? What do they do?”
“They pool their money to afford a group taxi ride to church every week. But they don’t have enough to afford a ride back. They just come to the service in faith that God will provide them with rides afterward. To my knowledge, he always has.”
“No kidding!” I responded, “Well, in that case, I change my mind. We should not do the half-and-half thing, unless we do it for everyone. Instead, the local believers need to hear how these Pakistani brothers are prioritizing the weekly gathering like this. What an example.”
I was convicted and encouraged to hear of the faith of these migrant brothers. Even more so because this was the same week where our own vehicle purchase was being finalized. To tell the truth, neither myself as a Western believer nor my believing Central Asian friends would have considered this kind of transportation plan actually feasible or wise. But now we were confronted with some faithful South Asian brothers who have been doing it week in and week out for years.
It seems that sometimes the faithful poor are quietly the richest in faith among us. Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God (Luke 6:20).
Now, I don’t believe that the rest of us should suddenly sell our vehicles, cut our incomes, and do as the Pakistanis do. Rather, scripture would call us to watch out for pride, to not put our trust in our transportation riches, and to instead trust God and be generous, ready to share our vehicles and taxi money to bless the body (1 Tim 6:17-19).
But I think the example of these brothers does mean that we should be convicted about how far we are willing to go to honor the bride of Christ. After all, if we are supposed to be willing to obey to the point of shedding blood, then that surely means we should be relatively radical in what we’re willing to do to obediently gather with God’s people (Heb 2:4, 10:25).
Yes, even if that might mean a very long and dusty walk home afterward. How interesting though that it has not yet meant this for our Pakistani brothers, even though they risk it week in, week out. For now, God seems to enjoy rewarding them with rides back home after church. And what a sweet weekly reminder of God’s provision this must be for these resource-strapped men.
But eternity is coming, and along with it all of God’s perfectly poetic rewards. And I, for one, will not be surprised if these migrant brothers end up with some of the nicest ‘rides’ in all of New Jerusalem.
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.
God provided the needed teacher for our kids’ school. Praise Him!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
This helpful article from the Great Commission Council focuses on something that happens far more than you might expect – good churches sending unqualified missionaries to the mission field. As the article points out, when this happens it usually means the local church has not understood that it, not the mission agency, has the primary responsibility and authority to assess prospective missionaries. Rather than outsourcing this critical role to the agency, the sending church should focus on assessing potential missionaries in three categories: 1) Character, 2) Clear vision of biblical ministry, and 3) Preparedness for the mission field.
A young couple, fairly new to the church and largely unknown, asked to meet with the elders. Much to the elders’ surprise, the couple informed them that they were going to be missionaries. They had applied to a mission agency and were assessed and approved by that agency to leave for the field pending the agreement of their home church to be designated as their sending church. With a simple sign-off from the elders, the church could send some of their own to labor for the gospel among the nations. Sounds exciting!
Wisely, the elders pushed pause. They could sense that this couple loved Jesus and cared deeply for the nations. Yet, the elders had no reason to believe the couple was gifted for ministry. The elders had seen no evidence of them sharing the gospel with a non-believer, and they certainly couldn’t identify any fruit from such labors. The elders also couldn’t identify anyone in a discipleship relationship with either of them. Though they didn’t seem disqualified, there was nothing the elders had seen that would indicate this couple was called to the missionary task and equipped for it. The elders reasoned that in a year or so, they could reassess the couple for missionary service.
The sad reality is that the most unusual thing about the story above is the elders’ questioning the process…
The Lord has provided all the funds we need for our vehicle and our first year on the field! Thank you to all of you who have prayed for us, encouraged us, and given to us during these past nine months of support raising!
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
One month into our return to Central Asia and we’re still able to see some of those things that are quite different from living in the US. This ability will not last forever. Day by day our senses register everything around us the new normal and we stop noticing the differences almost altogether. That is, until some member of a short-term team points them out to us.
One of the things that has jumped out at me recently is the variety of things that block the streets here in our corner of Central Asia that you’d be hard-pressed to ever encounter on a major road in an American community. But for our new/old location of Caravan City, these things are actually quite normal. So, without further ado, I present The Things That Block the Streets.
Winter kerosene distribution. The other day I was driving to the park when I noticed that the road up ahead was completely blocked by a crowd of men waiting with pickup trucks, motorcycle carts, and metal barrels. Eventually, when a large smelly tanker pulled up, I realized what was going on. The crowd was waiting for the annual government kerosene distribution. For several decades now, many local families have relied on the government to provide them with one barrel of fuel for their kerosene heaters that is meant to last them through the coming winter. This is viewed locally almost like a human right, especially for those who are poor or working class, something that no legitimate government should ever ignore. After all, in an oil-rich country, why should anyone not be able to afford some basic kerosene heating? It’s important enough to the civil servants and the citizens that the routes of daily commuters are of no concern when it’s time to distribute this year’s winter fuel. Time until road is open: an hour or two.
Funeral tents. Countless times we’ve been driving through neighborhood streets when we make a turn and are suddenly faced by a large black tent that spans the width of the street, packed on the inside with stackable plastic chairs. This means someone who lived on that street has just passed away. For several days, the street now belongs to the funeral tent and its constant traffic of friends, neighbors, and relatives coming to sit and pay their respects and listen to a Mullah-for-hire occasionally chant the Qur’an. You are welcome to enter the tent on foot and participate in the funeral ritual, but there is no way your car is getting through. Time until road is open: three or four days.
Election time vehicle parade mobs. Our region’s parliament is holding elections soon and I narrowly avoided getting sucked into one of these metal mobs just the other night. You’ve probably seen images or videos of Trump vehicle convoys in the US. Well, put that on steroids. And instead of a single line of pickup trucks, picture instead a multitude of all kinds of vehicles, with people hanging out the window, waving flags, and honking horns, taking up the entire width of the street. Sometimes they camp out in one spot as they celebrate and try to outdo the other vehicle parades in their enthusiasm. One year we got stuck in one of these for two hours. Time until road is open: fifteen minutes to two hours.
Spontaneous lane creation. Lanes painted on the road are optional recommendations here. Especially when traffic is heavy, three lanes may suddenly turn into six as all the local drivers try to inch ahead with margins that make any Western visitors deeply distraught. This usually works out, amazingly, without anyone’s car scraping along the side of someone else’s. But occasionally the locals do get just a little too aggressive in their spontaneous lane creation and the whole thing ends up one big traffic knot. Thankfully, locals – who really are quite gifted drivers in tight spaces – can usually undo this knot without too much trouble. Time until road is open: five to fifteen minutes.
Herds of sheep, goats, cows, or geese. This one is more common on the outskirts of the city or while driving through smaller towns or village areas. Turns out shepherds and cowherds are quite patient people, which is no doubt a good characteristic for their line of work. But this also means they’re in no hurry to get their livestock across the road and happy to let their herd saunter past the growing line of vehicles on either side. Time until road is open: two to five minutes.
Protests. Government not paying your salary on time? Receiving even less electricity than usual? Take to the streets! This is more common in Poet City or in village areas than here in Caravan City, where the locals are more submissive. And of all the things that block the streets, this one is the most dangerous. Not because the protestors themselves are violent – but because the government response might be. It’s not uncommon for tear gas canisters and even bullets to begin flying when a decent-sized protest is blocking the road, so our policy has long been to stay as far away from protests as possible. Time until road is open: depends on how quickly the trucks full of men with AK-47s arrive, but usually an hour or so.
We’ve learned that there is no wisdom in fighting against these things that block the streets. These blockages and delays are simply part of what it means to be a driver in our corner of Central Asia. The best response is to relax, trust God, and to try to find a way around. Or, to turn off your engine and settle in for a good conversation. Who knows? You may even have time to get out of your car, drink a quick shot of chai, and buy some sunflower seeds for munching while you continue to wait in your vehicle. You may have planned your day and your route like a Westerner, but you are in Central Asia now. The things that block the road come with the territory. Rest in God’s plan to make you more patient and maybe even more Central Asian. And eat those sunflower seeds. Seriously, the seeds really do help.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (only 2k currently needed!), you can reach out here.
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Sometimes the way the Son sets you free is by first sending you to prison. This is what happened to Red*, a Central Asian friend whose path keeps intersecting with mine in ways both curious and unpredictable. Finding out that he is now born again, a new man, has been one of the best surprises of our return so far.
The first time I met Red I was perusing a bookshop in the heart of the bazaar. This was back in Poet City*, during our first term. I was scanning the shelves when a young bespectacled man approached me, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old. He asked, in English, if I was a foreigner. I responded in the local language that yes, I was. He was delighted I could speak his language and introduced himself as Red, telling me that he lived an hour and a half to the east, in one of the most conservative cities in our region.
Red told me that he led a weekly philosophy group with some of his peers and that he wanted me to come and visit the group sometime. I was fascinated. This was the same city that had lost 500 of its young men a few years earlier. They had been radicalized by an extremely violent terrorist group and had gone off to die in Jihad. What was going on with Red and these other students such that rather than go along with the dominant religious culture of their city, they instead gathered to discuss philosophy? Chances were, some of them were genuinely searching for the truth. We exchanged numbers and I fully intended to visit Red’s group. But for some reason, I never made it out to visit those high school students. Recalling this when we were preparing for our first furlough, it felt like I had missed something that I had been supposed to pursue.
For our second term, we were asked to relocate to the Caravan City*, three hours away, where we planned to form a church planting partnership with the international church. And who should approach me after the very first service we attended? Red, of all people. It had been a couple of years since our bookshop encounter, but we recognized one another right away. I was thrilled to see him attending this solid, gospel-preaching church. Red explained to me that he was now going to university in Caravan City and that he had developed a deep love for Jesus – an affection fostered by his discovery, of all things, of “Positive, Encouraging!” American Christian Radio online.
Inwardly, I chuckled at myself. I was not a huge fan of mainstream American Christian radio music. I felt most of the songs were too shallow, too individualistic, too generic, and too “Jesus is my boyfriend.” This kind of disillusionment with Christian pop worship music had even led me to give up on Christian music outside of church settings for about a decade. But just like action figure Jesus or the song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, God seemed to enjoy taking parts of American Christian culture that made me cringe and using them to draw Central Asians to himself.
Red was not yet a believer. But he was clearly drawn to Jesus and also to the church community. Though he would often attend the English-language service over the next six months, he didn’t seem interested in attending our local language Bible study. This trend was not uncommon among young men, but it did make it harder to tell if they were genuinely drawn to Jesus versus English and friendships with Americans. Then the Covid lockdowns came, universities shut down, and Red was stuck back in his hometown. It was at this point that he asked me if we could study the Bible together over the Internet. I happily agreed.
Normally, I start in the Book of Matthew with my Muslim friends. Matthew’s concrete language, regular takedowns of pharisaical religion, and slow and steady case for Jesus’ divinity have meant multiple Central Asian friends have come to faith somewhere in the middle of the book. But, remembering that Red was drawn to philosophy, I decided to read the book of John with him. For the next couple of months, we walked through the first half of John together. It seemed like Red’s mind and heart were being engaged by the Word, but it was still not clear that he understood the gospel.
After a short period, our video call Bible studies came to an end. I can’t recall exactly why, but it was right around when my family was suddenly plunged into crisis when my daughter got terribly sick from what we soon learned was new-onset diabetes. By God’s grace, her life was spared. But this meant the next six months were spent, first, in trying to get out of the country at a time when international air travel was almost completely shut down, and then, trying to figure out in the US if we could stabilize enough to come back.
When we finally did return in the fall of 2020, Red had a unique proposition for me. What if we started an English-language radio station together? Red’s father was the owner of dozens of radio towers in our region. Because of this, he had a good relationship with one of the major media networks here. His son had inherited his father’s knack for all things radio, and so with a few good words from Dad, Red had been invited to pitch a new English-language radio station, focused on the youth of our region.
The pitch had gone well, in part due to the executives’ surprise at this cocky 20-year-old who didn’t seem fazed at all to be interviewing with some of the more powerful media men in the country – including the network CEO, the president’s cousin. Red was very confident in his vision for this new English radio station and in his own abilities to form a solid team. In this, he was not wrong. He was extremely smart, a visionary, and able to form a great team. But Red had no idea how to manage his team or how to break down his vision into a practical plan. As a fellow visionary-type myself (at the time trying to lead my own deeply divided team), I could relate. Unfortunately, this weakness as a manager would ultimately spell the doom of Red’s grand radio plans.
I was brought onto the team to do short, engaging content on the history of our region. Because our locals really value concrete, visual proof of competence, I showed up to the next interview in my nicest teacher jacket, carrying a huge stack of history books. When the president’s cousin and the other radio executives asked me what I was doing with all these books, I was able to tell them that they were full of fascinating stories about their past that none of them had ever heard before. Holding up my chai cup as an example, I shared with them how the American revolutionaries’ boycott of British tea eventually led to tea becoming the reigning hot beverage in our region, replacing coffee. The British needed a market for all their excess tea now that the American market was closed, so they pivoted hard to Central Asia. “And that’s why you drink chai so much,” I concluded. Apparently, my little demonstration had the intended effect and I was officially dubbed a history expert fit for national radio.
In the following weeks, we made it as far as visiting a fancy new tower under construction to give our input on the blueprints for our new studio. This step made it seem like it was really going to happen.
There were six of us on the team: Red, myself, a local who had grown up in Canada and was now a gifted trilingual DJ, and several other young men and women who were in charge of running other fun or educational shows. Since I was in my early 30s, I was the old experienced guy among this crew of 20-somethings. I was hoping to leverage my ‘old man’ status to help hold the team together since serious signs of dysfunction were already showing.
Good questions about timing, expectations, and compensation were dismissed by Red as people not being optimistic enough or not truly understanding the vision. Consistently, Red was able to describe the end goal, but not what we needed to do to practically get there. And though he was brilliant in some ways, he was also very young and often unreliable. He might go dark for days at a time, leaving the rest of us to text each other to figure out what was actually happening. When the team found out he had merely been preoccupied with a new girlfriend, for example, tempers flared.
In the end, the new radio station never came to fruition. There was no clear announcement, just longer and longer periods of silence from Red until eventually the rest of us concluded that the thing must have been killed for some reason behind the scenes. The others moved on to other projects. My family found ourselves suddenly asked to move back to Poet City. And the whole radio thing became a strange unfinished story that only came out unexpectedly with friends. “Weren’t you supposed to be doing history stuff on the radio? Whatever happened to that?”
That was the last I heard of Red – until this month, that is. Upon our return to Caravan City, I learned that not only had Red been around, but he was now a beloved new believer. He had recently moved back to Poet City and everyone in the church here seemed to miss his presence. Could this be the same Red that I knew? This past week he visited Caravan City again and shared with me what happened.
Last year, Red had traveled to another country in our region. There, for some reason, he took a selfie in front of the Mexican embassy. Apparently, this is a big no-no. Red was arrested and ended up in prison for two whole months before being extradited back to his home country. While this all sounds like overkill to me, it must have been some kind of providential overkill. This is because while in prison, Red came to the end of himself. For the first time, he knew himself to be a sinner. He came under conviction for his different addictions, for his womanizing, for his pride. His Bible came alive to him as he read it for hours every day in his cell. And for the first time, he experienced the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.
“The Bible is so clear and rich to me now,” he told me. “I could never understand it when we would read it before. But now I feel like I can finally understand it and like I could study it forever.”
Red’s physical demeanor even seemed different to me. True, he had aged a bit. There were now hints of grey showing up in his beard and hair. But he also seemed more at peace than he had before, humble even. He told me excitedly about how he’s hoping to get baptized soon and trying to figure all that out now that he’s going to be joining the international church in Poet City. Because he’s been discipled as a new believer here in Caravan City, the two churches may end up doing a baptism picnic together to celebrate.
Red and I hugged as we said goodbye and laughed about all the ways we keep running into one another over the years, from the bookshop to our season as prospective radio hosts, to the brotherhood we now finally share together. If our future paths are anything like what our past paths have been, then I’m sure I’ll see him again soon.
I now see that same fancy tower where our radio studio was supposed to be every time I look out my bedroom window. It’s a good reminder to pray for Red. In years past, we had prayed a lot for Red to be set free. For that to happen, God had to first send him to prison. An unexpected means of answering prayer? Yes. But Red, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind at all.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (only 3k currently needed), you can reach out here.
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
…perhaps, indeed, we should be talking not of language prestige but language charisma. Sanskrit, besides being the sacred language of Hinduism, has owed much to disciples of the Buddha; and Hebrew would have been lost thousands of years ago with Judaism. Arabic is more ambiguous: in the long term, Islam has proved the fundamental motive for its spread, but it was Arab-led armies which actually took the language into western Asia and northern Africa, creating new states in which proselytising would follow. Arabs were also famous as traders round the Indian Ocean, but the acceptance of Islam in these areas has never given Arabic anything more than a role in liturgy. Curiously, the linguistic effects of spreading conversions turn out to be almost independent of the preachers’ own priorities. Christians have been fairly indifferent to the language in which their faith is expressed, and their classic text, The New Testament, records the sayings of Jesus in translation; and yet Christianity itself has played a crucial role in the preservation of, and indeed the prestige of, many languages, including Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Gothic.
– Ostler, Empires of the Word, pp. 21-22
Ostler makes some interesting observations here on the effect that religion has on languages. It’s a mixed picture. Clearly, religion can be one major factor in why languages spread and how they are preserved. But as he notes, the results can be very unpredictable. The acquisition or spread of a new faith along with a new language sometimes go together. But not always.
In terms of Christianity’s posture toward which language we use to make disciples, we often forget the fact that the sayings of Jesus in the New Testament are a Spirit-inspired translation of his actual words. This is good evidence that God is a pro-translation God, modeling for us that the most important truths in the universe can indeed make the jump from one tongue to another. This apparently holds true even though the range of meanings for an individual word in a given language is always slightly or even vastly different from that of its equivalent in another language – if an equivalent exists at all. Languages are never one-to-one equivalents, and yet God provided four infallible translation accounts of Jesus’ teachings. This provides much hope for those of us involved in translation work that is definitely fallible, but God willing, still good.
Christianity’s preservation of languages through Bible translation alone is something celebrated even by pagans. But languages redeemed to serve the Church can still go awry. Forgetting that not even the language of Jesus was preserved by the authors of the New Testament as the holy language of heaven and earth, believers in certain ages have tried to elevate their own languages instead, whether that be Latin, Greek, Coptic, Syriac, or KJV English. While the desire to preserve a tongue once used mightily by God is commendable, it becomes a bad thing when a rigid ongoing use of that tongue in liturgy or preaching increasingly denies God’s people the kind of hearing that can lead to faith.
Every Sunday for decades, the gospel was utterly unintelligible for one of my closest friends who grew up in an ethnic Christian community here in Central Asia. This was not only because he was not yet born again – but because God’s word had been fossilized in an ancient form of his language that was no longer intelligible to anyone but the priests. Turns out the miracle of the new birth can only take place when the gospel is communicated in a language we can understand.
The language is never the end in and of itself. It is the means by which we reach our goal of spiritual communication. Lose sight of this and we risk losing entire people groups that once were saturated with vibrant churches and true believers.
If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (only 3k currently needed), you can reach out here.
Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
