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
“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.
For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
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
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.
…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.
One of the interesting roles that God has given me is being the Reformed guy who tries to convince other Reformed guys that culture really does matter.
I cannot say how grateful I am for the Bible-loving, church-centered, missions-minded, theologically-robust Reformed circles that I have been a part of since college. The pushback that these circles have offered against the errors of popular missiology has been both courageous and necessary. That same pastoral and theological pushback has exposed my own missionary blindspots again and again, driving me back to the Word when I might have otherwise been swept along by the popular current.
When it comes to culture, for example, missionaries have all too often taken things too far. For example, they have taken something observably true like the homogenous unit principle – that the gospel naturally spreads along preexisting lines of culture and relationship – and made it into a prescriptive law: Serious missionaries should only share the gospel and plant churches in groups that share the same culture or are part of the same “household.” Or, popular missiology has elevated culture to such heights that it would rather missionaries disobey clear commands of scripture than risk “contaminating” the culture of the local believers with that of the missionary. In areas such as these, my Reformed, church-centered brethren have been absolutely right to sound the alarm. And I praise God that they were able to see these errors and speak up even if it meant upsetting the majority of their missionary friends.
However, the fact that culture’s role has been abused in missions often means that culture’s role now gets dismissed and discounted by those advocating for right and biblical priorities. It’s the classic pendulum swing, the baby getting tossed out with the bathwater. Or, as our Central Asian friends put it, the wet wood being burned with the dry.
Yet instead of being reactionary, we should seek to ask what kind of importance the Bible gives to culture – and to ourselves reflect that proper emphasis. If we study God’s book of creation, we will absolutely see that cultural differences exist and are very important. Indeed, entire disciplines (e.g. cultural anthropology) have arisen from studying this fact of creation. But what about God’s book of revelation?
One passage that helps us understand the weight the Bible gives to culture is 1st Corinthians 9:19-23, the classic passage on contextualization. Though even as I mention these verses I am aware that some may be tempted to tune out because this passage has been discussed in missions conversations ad nauseam. However, let me point out what a strange thing it is that we would effectively discount certain passages of the Bible because we’ve heard them referenced a lot. Regardless of whether passage feels novel or not, it’s the Word of God, and it still tells us about the nature of true reality. We must be on guard for the ways we are tempted to dismiss passages that have grown very familiar.
19] For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. [20] To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. [21] To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. [22] To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. [23] I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. (ESV)
In this passage, Paul tells us of his posture when it comes to the differences between himself and those he is trying to reach. It is the posture of a servant (v. 19). The differences specifically referenced here include belief, ethnicity, and conscience (Jew, under/outside the law, weak, etc). All three of these areas overlap significantly with our modern category of culture – essentially, that individuals and groups of people are significantly different from one another because of their underlying beliefs and external practices. But Paul even goes beyond these three specifics and lays out his broader application of this principle with his language of “all things to all people.” This means that if there is a difference that is a potential barrier between Paul and his hearer, and Paul can do so while still following the law of Christ, then he is going to bend to the preference and practice of the other. In this way, he serves others by removing unnecessary barriers. And he thereby gains a better hearing for the gospel message.
From this passage, we learn that cross-cultural interactions are opportunities for service. Biblically, the one who bends to the preference and practice of the other – when permissible and for the sake of the gospel – is taking the role of a servant.
Cultures are different. They do not come together and cooperate seamlessly. There is a necessary series of adjustments that must and will take place when someone from one culture is interacting with someone from another culture. This is happening whether we acknowledge it or not.
Especially when it comes to mutually exclusive areas of culture, you must choose one or the other. We cannot run a meeting that is time-oriented and relationship-oriented at the same time. Either we begin the meeting when we said we would or we begin the meeting when everyone has arrived. We must choose. We cannot be night-oriented and morning-oriented at the same time. Bible studies that don’t kick off until 11 pm are not compatible with a church service that begins at 8 am. We must choose one or the other. If the Westerners serve the Central Asians, our church become more relationship and night-oriented. If the Central Asians serve the Westerners, our church becomes more time and morning-oriented. Both can be good options for serving one another, depending on the way in which they take place.
If we are to be like Paul, then this act of service should be chosen, intentional, and taken on by the stronger as a way to serve those who are weaker. Too often, this fact that one must serve the other in a cross-cultural interaction goes unrecognized. What results is one party becoming the servant of the other without having chosen this. It just kind of happens. And this often means the weaker are made to serve the preferences of the stronger, simply because this is how power dynamics work in the natural world. So often it’s not even intentional on the part of the majority or dominant culture.
But Paul has his eyes open for these differences, these barriers. He knows that they can make a difference in his ability to win and save others, in his chance of sharing in the gospel’s blessings with new brothers and sisters. So Paul, doing ministry in a multicultural world and planting multicultural churches, chooses the posture of a servant. Whenever possible, he will bend towards the culture of the other. While Paul will never compromise the Word of God and the scandalous gospel message, he can bend in this way because he recognizes that not every difference in belief, custom, and conscience is a gospel issue. Jews are different from Greeks. And they can be built up into one new man even while they preserve their distinctiveness.
My contention is that in this area, as in so many others, we should seek to be like Paul. We should also recognize the cultural differences among those we minister to. And recognizing these differences, we should give them their proper weight and choose the posture of a servant as often as we can. This is especially true for those who are leaders in the church.
Now for the denials. By calling for us to give proper weight to culture, here’s what I’m not saying:
I am not saying that this means that culture is more important than simple and clear gospel proclamation.
I am not saying that cultural differences alone are sufficient for planting separate churches (though language differences are).
I am not saying that we shouldn’t try in each and every local church to show that the gospel overcomes natural human divisions.
I am not saying that you must become an expert in each subculture of your very diverse congregation in order to truly serve them.
I am not saying that it’s wrong for you to live in, appreciate, and value your own culture.
I am not saying that you must always be the one to serve others in this area. It can go both ways.
As in so many areas, to give culture its proper weight we must hold this principle in tension with other truths. I have often summarized this tension like this: The gospel serves every culture. And the gospel rules over and transcends all cultures. Both of these truths are wonderful and true and belong together. A Pauline worker is therefore one who seeks to serve others in their cultures while also planting and leading churches that create new hybrid gospel cultures.
My Central Asian friends need to glory in the fact that Jesus has entered into their minority language and culture for the sake of redeeming a remnant from it for all eternity. And they need to glory in the fact that the gospel is not just for their people, but for all the peoples of the world, even their oppressors. As they grow in maturity, they too need to learn how to bend toward the preferences and customs of others that they are seeking to reach and serve.
Now, some of us are called to study and put on another culture to a deeper extent than others. Cross-cultural church planters, I’m looking at you. But most are not called to this. Most Christians would simply be served to learn the biblical principle that they should strive to serve those who are different from them. And they can do this by learning about the cultural differences that exist and seeking to accommodate them as often as is loving. This is a very practical way to love others and small gestures in this direction often pay much bigger dividends than we’d ever expect.
“Is there anything about the way we do things around here that is difficult or strange for you?”
“How can we demonstrate respect and care for you according to the culture you grew up in?”
“What’s hard for you about being a minority in our church? What makes you feel like you don’t fit here?”
Basic questions like these allow us to become the servants of others in the practical, day-to-day love that really counts. Rather than pretending that cultural differences don’t really matter because cultural differences have been abused, we should seek to be like Paul. We should seek to be a servant of others, “for the sake of the gospel.” Yes, it takes some work to do this. But there is great joy to be experienced if we will take this posture. Like Paul says, when others are saved we’ll get to share with them in the blessings of the gospel.
So, Reformed friends, culture is not everything, but neither is it nothing. It really does matter. Let’s put it in its proper place and then take our proper place – the place of a servant.
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I turned around, knowing exactly whose voice and contagious laugh that was.
It was Adam*, my very first believing friend in Central Asia, plaster wall visionary, goofball, and dear brother embattled with mental illness. We gave one another a big laughing bear hug in the middle of all the other arriving campers.
This past week I was on a short setup trip to Central Asia and towards the end of the trip I left my apartment-hunting to join a bunch of the local believers for one night in an ancient valley in between our two cities. This came about because my trip had just happened to coincide with the annual camping trip that one of my former teammates leads for a sports outreach he conducts. A good number of the local believers in our previous city, like Darius*, have also been regularly involved with this sports group from the beginning. It’s been a great opportunity for them to do relational evangelism with the unbelieving participants – as well as a chance to learn about mortifying anger when it gets stirred up by the fierce combat otherwise known as ultimate frisbee.
“A.W., what should I do? The other player I’ve been struggling with said ‘Good job’ to me when I scored. Outwardly, I said, ‘Thanks,’ but in my heart, I said, ‘You father of a dog!’ …Do you think I need to repent?'”
Out of the twenty or so men who ended up coming on this camping trip, I was glad to see it was about half believers and half not. In the midst of a trip focused on logistics, I was hopeful that this night would make for some encouraging conversations. I was not to be disappointed. Most of us were up past 3 am. And the conversations ranged all over the place – apologetics, philosophy, linguistics, as well as just catching up and cutting up. Needless to say, my rusty local language skills got put to work. At one point, I wondered what in the world my jet-lagged self was doing trying to discuss Hegelian philosophy in another language at 2 am with a new believer.
Perhaps the most encouraging conversation of the night was with Adam and his friend, Dr. Troy*. I had heard recently that Adam, my dear friend who for the last couple of years has been on the mend from paranoid schizophrenia, had led one of his friends to faith. This friend was Dr. Troy. And this is how it happened.
Dr. Troy had grown up in a family that taught him the way to get ahead was to appear outwardly unimpressive and foolish, but to secretly work harder than all your peers, resulting in the end in a great upset when you came out ahead of all of them. Needless to say, this approach to life did not win Dr. Troy many friends. He grew up isolated, angry, and hating most others around him.
“I was like this all the time,” he said, pulling up a picture of a hissing cobra which was for some reason wearing a seat belt.
But though he was isolated and angry, he succeeded in getting high marks in school, was accepted to medical college, and eventually became a new doctor. One day, a trip to the bathroom at the hospital where he was doing his residency meant that he missed the person who came by to mark down employee attendance. So, Dr. Troy went down to the first floor to find him. Notice here how eternity can sometimes hinge on such seemingly mundane events.
While downstairs, Dr. Troy was approached by a bearded man in his late 30s who wore a mischievous grin and looked at him with bright eyes that carried a hint of either brilliance or insanity – or perhaps both. This was, of course, Adam. Dr. Troy was somewhat confused and offended that this obviously local man began the conversation in English, rather than in their native tongue. Nevertheless, he heard him out and answered his questions about a friend that he was there to see. When asked about his good English and strange insistence on using it, Adam replied by telling Dr. Troy that he was an English tutor and handing him his business card. If the good doctor was interested in IELTS tutoring, then Adam told him he could contact him.
A little while later, Dr. Troy did just that. For quite some time, Dr. Troy had been struggling with major depression, anxiety, and hopelessness. All of his meds only seemed to be making things worse. He wanted to do something that might boost his self-esteem, and so he thought passing the IELTS English test might be just the thing. In the beginning, their relationship was purely focused on English. But one day something shifted. Dr. Troy broke down and told Adam about his deep despair. He told him that things had gotten so bad that he had even become suicidal.
Adam proceeded to share his own story with Dr. Troy, how he had grown up in a deeply dysfunctional local family, how he had found Jesus as a young man, how he had then wandered from Jesus during his sojourn in Europe, falling into drugs and mental illness. He then described how his friends had helped him get back to Central Asia, how that had failed to bring any improvement, but how one day God had unexpectedly freed him from so much of his mental suffering. In the days since, Adam told him about his steady trajectory of healing that included regular church attendance, serving others, cutting way back on meds and stimulants, and seeking to deal honestly with the costs of his unhealthy upbringing.
Dr. Troy was compelled by the testimony of his quirky English tutor and decided to see if a similar path might help him as well. He decided to trust Adam and follow his advice. And Adam provided Dr. Troy with that ingredient of healing so transformative for the human heart and mind – a loyal Christian friend who will simply stick with you, even in the blackest night.
But I was curious as I listened to this tale. Was Dr. Troy really now a believer? It’s one thing to identify with a new group of friends because they’ve shown you kindness in your suffering. It’s another thing to believe in Jesus and apostatize from everything you were taught growing up in an Islamic society.
“Jesus is all about love,” Dr. Troy said to me, “This was remarkable to me. He’s so different from Muhammad.”
Okay, I thought to myself, getting a bit closer…
“The thing is,” Dr. Troy continued, “He’s the only one without our human failures. The only one. Everyone else is so broken, so messed up, does so many wrong things… like me. He’s the only one without… without…”
“Without sin?”
“Yes, that’s the word, without sin. The only one. That’s how it’s so clear that he must be the Son of God. Not like all the other prophets. All of them sin. But not Jesus.”
Dr. Troy shook his head and stared at the tea kettle, now steaming on top of a bed of coals.
“A.W.,” my former teammate said, joining the conversation, “Have you heard the good news? Dr. Troy is going to get dunked soon,” he said with a smile and a cautious look at the other campers milling around.
“Wow, may you be holy!” I said to the good doctor, which is the local language equivalent of ‘congratulations.’ That phrase always feels extra appropriate for occasions such as this. I knew that if things had reached this point, then Dr. Troy must be showing strong signs of the new birth. My former teammates and the mature local brothers are trustworthy soul doctors.
“I don’t know what I would have done had I not randomly met Adam that day,” Dr. Troy said, “I mean, yes, he’s a very strange man, you know how he does the — and the —-”
Here, Dr. Troy, with a clear gift for imitation, made several of the bizarre expressions and body movements that Adam tends to make. This, of course, set Adam laughing like the good sport he is, so I felt free to chuckle as well. The impressions were spot on.
“But my life has changed so much since I’ve been following his advice. I took him to visit my family and my parents and sisters thanked him over and over for all the ways they’ve seen my life change because of his influence.”
Adam beamed awkwardly as Dr. Troy said this latter part. I looked at him and remembered what a hard road he’s had. Back in 2008, he was the most gifted evangelist I had ever seen. But then he had wandered for a very long time. In fact, Dr. Troy was the first person he had led to faith in fifteen years. It seemed that perhaps the gift he had been given as a new believer, the gift of evangelism, was at last being fanned into flame again. What an answer to prayer. I had so long hoped that Adam’s mind would turn away from fixation on the shadowy figures he thought were drugging and tracking him, and turn back to Jesus and to telling others about him. Now I was staring at evidence that it was actually happening.
Later that night Adam and I had more heartfelt conversation together. I told him how proud I was of him, and how thankful I was to see him continuing to gather with believers and now even serving others as well. I reminded him that God has made us to heal in community, that God himself gives us a relationship of complete safety and acceptance through Christ, and thus we can invite others into the community of the church where they can find true healing now – and complete healing in the resurrection.
“Adam, Jesus has granted you a measure of healing in this life. I’m so glad to see it. But don’t forget that this is just a taste. In the coming resurrection, you won’t just have a mind partially restored, but a mind and a whole body perfected and healed, forever.”
“Thank goodness for that!” Adam said, laughing and running a hand over his tired face and through his rapidly graying hair.
Adam went on to humbly ask forgiveness for all the trouble he had put my family through during his darker years. And to ask me to please buy some flowers for my wife on his behalf – since she was the only woman who still showed him kindness and hospitality during that time. He wanted to know what he could do for me, anything at all.
“Adam, you know we will always be brothers and friends, no matter what. Just don’t forget that. But you also know we’ll need to live in another city when we come back in a couple months. So I would ask that you keep on serving this young church that we love so much – and keep on sharing the gospel with others, just like you did with Dr. Troy.”
“You got it, bro,” Adam said, giving me a fist bump. And I knew he meant it.
At that point, Darius snuck up behind me and gave me a big strangling bear hug. And from there, the night continued on with more rich conversations with believers, challenging questions from unbelievers, games, and ultimately a few hours of very uncomfortable sleep.
I have so missed this kind of setting. This past year and a half in the States has been good in so many ways. God has provided rest, refreshment, healing, and help above and beyond what we could have asked for.
But I have to be honest. I can’t wait to be living in Central Asia again. And I can’t believe we’ll actually get to do so.
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Manuel* was ready to be baptized. And since it was late Spring, the church opted to plan a baptism picnic. From where we were living, a short trip into the mountains would take us to a nice lake area created by a large dam. This is a favorite picnic area for locals since the lake and the river proceeding from the dam mean opportunities for swimming and even the occasional rental jet-ski. Hence why it can also be a good fit for baptisms. Some readers may recall that this is the same area where once, during the worst dust storm in decades, we had to buy our kids marijuana-themed underpants.
Beforehand, the women had divided the food responsibilities amongst themselves. My wife was assigned the unenviable task of bringing what in the local language is called the “sweety,” i.e. the cake. Now, locals tend to prefer cakes that look like they are on their way to prom but taste like cardboard. We Westerners don’t care as much about how fancy the cake looks, but we like it to have lots of delicious icing, which locals say makes it way too sweet. This is a bit confusing to us since they like to eat baklava with Coke, which we find way too sweet. In any case, turns out the happy middle ground is sweet-ish desserts like banana bread, carrot cake, and other breads/cakes of this genre. So, my wife had made a carrot cake of this variety (with no icing) in a large glass casserole dish. It was stashed in the back of our family’s Kia SUV, along with some other food and picnic supplies.
As usual, we all met up at a gas station on the edge of town in order to buy any needed supplies and to rearrange the food and passengers in whatever vehicles we had. In all of the mixing and matching, Patty* and her teenage daughter ended up with us, and this somehow meant that our two young kids were asked to clamber up into our vehicle through the back hatch of the SUV. This had them climbing over the food. So, of course, one of them stepped directly in the middle of the baptism cake. The cake had been covered in a layer of plastic wrap, but the imprint of a little foot in the middle of the cake was unmistakable. Oh well, we thought, we’ll deal with that later. It was now almost lunch time and we still had an hour’s drive ahead of us.
To find a good baptism location, we’d need to consider several factors. First, the water would need to be deep enough, slow enough, and easy enough to get in and out of. Second, the spot would need to be both private enough and public enough for a Christian baptism in a context of moderate Islamic persecution. Third, its picnic potential would need to satisfy the majority of the locals – who by then we’d learned love to argue ad nauseam about the pros and cons of various picnic locations. American men pride themselves on their superior opinions about barbecuing, road trip methodology, thermostat settings, and the like. Central Asian men pride themselves on their superior opinions about being able to find the perfect picnic spot.
The first location that we drove to was a picnic house of sorts right up alongside the river. It had been vouched for by Mr. Talent* as an ideal location. Next to the small house, there was a large covered cement veranda for the picnic meal, complete with metal stairs that led down into the current. But one look over the railing down at the fast-moving water had Manuel shaking his head. Like most locals, Manuel was not a great swimmer – and that current was fast and strong, freezing, several feet deep, and running over slick rocks. Even though I had grown up swimming in the rivers of Melanesia, I also wasn’t confident that it would be safe to put a big man like Manuel under the water in a place like that.
Much debate ensued with Mr. Talent vigorously defending his chosen location. At last, we all decided to pile back in the vehicles to go to a spot that Frank* claimed had nice and slow-flowing water and lots of greenery. By now it was past lunchtime. Another fifteen minutes of driving brought us to the picnic spot that Frank suggested. It seemed to have been some kind of smaller river created by an overflow pipe from the dam. It also seemed like it had been very popular this season because it was trashed. Watermelon rinds, flies, sunflower seed shells, and evidence of hookah smoking were everywhere. The water itself was slow enough, but it was quite dirty, even stagnant. The whole place smelled of rotten eggs, plus there was no longer any good ground for our picnic mats that had not yet been trampled into mud. Once again, heated debate ensued.
By this time, Patty was starving. Patty, a foodie and quite the impressive chef herself, decided that it was no longer logical for her and her daughter to wait for these men to make up their minds. She needed to eat something. So, she opened up the back of our vehicle to start rummaging through the food. This is when Patty made a noise and held up the cake to show it to us. To our great frustration, we saw that there were now two little footprints in the baptism cake. We assumed this would make the cake inedible, but while we lectured our offspring about watching where they were stepping, Patty simply grabbed a disposable fork and started eating the cake directly from the dish – though carefully avoiding the areas with the little footprints.
At some point, Manuel spoke up, telling the crowd of haggling and gesticulating men that he had a spot that he knew at the upper part of the lake which would do just fine, at least for the baptism. Everyone seemed good to defer to the actual person getting baptized, so a decision was made that a smaller group of us men would drive up to this spot. Once we were finished the dunking we would all meet back at the original location that Mr. Talent had chosen. The women greeted this news with nonplussed expressions. The kids were starting to lose it, it was getting hot, and all of us were getting hungry. Patty and her daughter, for their part, were hiding behind our vehicle, making good work of the baptism cake.
Thankfully, this third baptism location seemed like it would work. The water of the lake was warm, still, and deep enough. The only issue was the depth of the mud. As you stepped into the water, your feet sank down into many inches of brown muck which sent little chocolate clouds billowing up around you. I double-checked with Manuel that this really was okay. But he insisted that this would do just fine. So, one of the local brothers and I waded out and flanked Manuel in waste-deep water. We asked him the baptism questions, then, based on his profession of faith, together put him under the water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He came up out of that muddy water beaming with joy. I was reminded that, imperfect though our day had been, baptism is still an amazing thing.
We were a happy vehicle driving back down to the picnic house, where we knew hours of drinking chai, eating skewered meat, singing worship songs, and fellowshipping awaited us. To my great amazement, when we arrived, my wife and Patty were passing out little cubes of baptism cake. I raised my eyebrows and gave my wife a questioning look.
“There was a little bit left between the footprints and what Patty had scarfed down,” she said, “so we just cut around those parts.”
I stared down suspiciously at my little chunk of “sweety” that had been through so much already that day.
“Just eat it,” my wife said with a sly smile. “Nobody has to know.”
So I did. I ate my little piece of baptism cake. And it was downright tasty.
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For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
