Tag: True Stories

Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid

I have written many posts over the years exploring how far too many missionaries have drunk the metaphorical Kool-Aid and need to get back to healthier ministry models based both on the Bible and good, local contextualization.

This is not one of those posts. 

This is a post about some very literal Kool-Aid that I should not have drunk. Fair warning, this story from my high school years in Melanesia involves a lot of what has at times been called Montezuma’s revenge. I won’t get graphic, but, alas, I can’t tell the story without that very central aspect of it. If you choose to read on, consider yourself warned.

Growing up, I had a mom who enjoyed a good prank. She would even prank us sometimes. During one of my sleepover birthday parties, my friends and I awoke to find that my mom had painted a number of our toenails while we were sleeping, as well as hidden Ziploc bags of slimy cooked spaghetti noodles into a fair number of our sleeping bags. I got her back by putting salt in her morning tea.

A few years later, my friends and I got some girls in our class good by dumping a bucket full of live cane toads into their exclusive hot tub gathering. My mom then happily collaborated with these girls to get me back when they ‘princess-bombed’ my bedroom.

Mom (mostly) knew of and was (mostly) amused by my friends and I stink-bombing or cough-bombing gatherings of other MKs (missionary kids), toilet-papering or VCR tape-wrapping our friends’ or teachers’ houses, and water-balloon ambushing high school couples who were just trying to have a romantic chat on a lovely Melanesian evening. She might have even quietly assisted graduating senior classes so they could pull off their tradition of pranking the entire school during the final week when their classes were done, but the rest of the school was still in session.

All that to say, I only ever saw my mom once get really angry over a prank.

It was the beginning of summer break, and my oldest brother was back visiting us after having returned to the US for university. I was sixteen, heading into the 10th grade. Most of the dorm kids were back with their families in remote, tribal areas of the country, but there were still a good number of us ‘base kids’ around to do things with. Breaks could sometimes be boring, but it wasn’t too hard to find groups of other MKs to hang out with, even if these groupings were somewhat different and more age-diverse than they were when school was in session.

On this particular night, a friend heading into the eleventh grade was hosting a movie night at his house. My older brother and I decided that we’d go. I don’t remember what the movie was, but I do remember arriving happy and being told that there was some Kool-Aid in the kitchen if we wanted any. Without thinking much of it, both of us got some big cups of red Kool-Aid and settled in to watch the movie. Afterward, we walked back home. It was an enjoyable summer evening, but there was nothing remarkable about it – or so I thought.

The next thing I remember is waking up suddenly at 5 am, knowing from the wild and awful feeling in my gut that I absolutely had to get to the bathroom. I rushed from my bedroom down the dark hallway to the single bathroom we had in that house. Relieved to have made it, I reached for the handle. It was locked.

What was going on? I banged on the door. 

“Uh… I really have to get in there!” 

The voice of my older brother came through the door, muffled, “It’ll be a minute. I’m really not doing well either.”

“I don’t think I have a minute!” 

…

Somehow, I hung on until my brother stumbled out of the bathroom a few minutes later. As I took his spot, something began to happen to my body that I had never quite experienced before. But after only a few shocking minutes of the most intense bowel movement of my life, my brother started banging on the door.

“Hurry up! I need to go again!”

“What?” You just went? What is happening?” 

“I dunno, man, but something is really wrong… Maybe we ate something bad!?” 

[insert audible moans of an unintelligible nature]

After a minute, I stumbled out, and my brother took his turn again. Initially, I felt much better and thought I had gone through the worst of it. However, only a few minutes later I realized my relief had been a delusion. Once again, I banged on the bathroom door, and my brother and I went through the same fraught negotiation.

This miserable tag-teaming of ours continued for hours. We reached the point, similar to food poisoning, where you know there is nothing left for your body to give, but somehow it is going to try anyway – and you, miserable you, are simply along for the ride. Finally, sometime mid-morning, we collapsed into our beds for some desperately needed recovery sleep.

It took all day before the insurrection in our intestines was finally quelled. Somehow, by God’s grace, we had performed the single toilet musical chair game successfully. But yes, there had been some very close calls. My brother and I sat across the table from each other to try to sip some fluids. We were skinnier than we had been a mere few hours beforehand. And our eyes and faces had a pale, shell-shocked look. What in the name of Melaneisan parasites had we just gone through?

My mom, for her part, had been doing some digging. Apparently my brother and I were the only ones from the previous night who had gotten sick, so it must not have been the snacks that had been passed around. Eventually, a local friend and student who had also been at the movie night dropped by and fessed up. One of the other MKs had dissolved eighty-some laxative pills in the Kool-Aid. He had warned everyone else beforehand not to drink it. Then, the whole room had watched in quiet amusement as my brother and I chugged whole glasses of the stuff.

No wonder I had never felt that way before. That may have been the first time I had ever taken laxatives, let alone drunk the equivalent of fifteen or twenty of them.

This was why my mom was so angry. All kinds of pranks may be good fun, but she felt we could have gotten pretty messed up physically from overdosing like that. It seemed that a line had clearly been crossed that could have made things down right dangerous (for this same kind of reason we had also stopped doing our cotton ball/chili pepper cough-bomb attacks).

I’m not sure what conversations may have taken place afterwards, but I remember hearing that our fellow MK responsible for our night and day of gastrointestinal pergatory felt really bad about it all. No direct apology was ever forthcoming, but he did end up becoming a financial supporter of my family many years down the road – perhaps the whole Kool-Aid incident played some part in that. God works in mysterious ways. However, I had forgiven him almost right away. I knew only too well the foolish things bored MKs can get up to. For instance, I once suggested we toilet paper the mission helicopter. I didn’t go through with it, but some friends did. That one was, similarly, a really bad idea.

Yes, all was quickly forgiven, but my brother and I were still somewhat-traumatized from drinking that Kool-Aid. So, as soon as we heard there was an opportunity to move into another house on the mission compound with two bathrooms, we were adamantly for it – even though this would mean only living in it for a year and then moving back to the same single-bathroom house. We’d rather move twice than stay and risk another night of Montezuma’s musical chair revenge.

Is there a lesson to be learned from this tale? Like my title, I could say “Don’t drink the laxative Kool-Aid.” But how are you to know if some mischievous classmate has secretly spiked it with dozens of Ex-Lax pills beforehand? No, I guess the lesson really is for those considering doing the spiking.

Friend, trust me, don’t do it. You do not understand the things you will set in motion. And I don’t just mean that metaphorically.

We’ve raised 16k of our 20k goal this summer! Would you consider supporting our work? You can give here through the blog or contact meto find out how to give through our organization.

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Unsplash

This post is 100% human-written. I used an AI tool for spell-check and grammar checking only.

A Gospel Grenade

Remember that time when Paul lobbed a gospel grenade into the midst of the Sanhedrin (“I’m on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead!) and it turned his blasphemy trial into a rabbinical bar fight? Luke says it got so bad the Roman tribune was genuinely worried that Paul would be torn to pieces (Acts 23:5-10).

One part of me thinks Paul was a bit of a madman for attempting this. The other part of me would like to try it someday.

I’ve never been in a setting where dropping gospel truth led to literal fist fights. But last year I did get a bit of a taste of what it was like to set off an uproar in my living room because of the scandalous nature of the God’s grace.

Until the Iran war kicked off and our proximity to certain drone strikes meant the guys got squeamish, we hosted a weekly discussion group for local unbelieving men. The concept was that we would partner with a few local believers by opening up our apartment, serving copious amounts of chai, popcorn, and sunflower seeds, and helping to facilitate discussion that would spiral into gospel truth.

Most of these young believing men do not yet have households and homes of their own to host this kind of gathering, so opening up our place was a practical help in this way. The fact that we are also Americans who speak the local language (and that my wife also knows how to keep the chai and snacks generously flowing) also helped sweeten the deal for the invited group of angsty young agnostics, philosopher types, and liberal Muslims.

Week by week, the motley crew that gathered grew in number. By the end, our living room was overflowing with around twenty five local men. We eventually learned that if we didn’t recruit a couple of the single teachers from our kids’ school to keep the kitchen going, we’d never make it.

It was chaos, but mostly a happy chaos. And chaos that led to gospel truth being shared every single week. It also wasn’t a very structured time. Usually, a young local pastor who was the main facilitator of the time would prepare one meaningful question to throw out to the attendees after we’d gathered them up from the half dozen or so smaller conversation groups that would inevitably form. This good question – “What is the true nature of unity?” for example – would give everyone present a chance to share, including the handful of believers who could then inject truth from God’s word into the mix.

Some weeks I would begin to despair as the deeply unhappy Jungian psychiatrist would drone on and on about the collective unconscious. Sometimes, the questions about alien soteriology, trauma, politics, or long-dead French philosophers would leave me uncertain if the night would truly be worth the effort it took to pull it off. But at the end of each gathering, I always went to bed encouraged (as well as both jittery and exhausted) because of the extent to which I or the other believers had got to share truth about Jesus.

We even had one young man come to faith through all this – a guest invited by the unhappy Jungian, no less.

One evening we called everyone into the bigger circle, including the guys who had been smoking hookah out on the balcony, when the discussion settled on Christians’ belief that even the vilest of sinners can be forgiven and go to heaven by faith alone through Christ alone.

One of the young political poets had the floor, and, as would sometimes happen, he directed the question to me as the older and more experienced Christian present. I’m only in my late thirties, but when the majority of the room is made up of young twenty-somethings, I’m considered an elder statesman of sorts.

“So, if Hitler…”

“Hitler?”

“Believed in Jesus before he died…”

“Yes…”

“Are you really saying that even Hitler, someone so bad, would be forgiven and go to heaven?”

The room grew silent as everyone turned to look at me. I chewed on whether it would be better to reframe the question or to answer it directly. No, I decided to simply go for it this time. Slowly, and as clearly as I could in the local language, I gave the blunt and direct answer.

“Jesus teaches that if the worst person in the entire world truly repents and believes… then yes… they are immediately and forever forgiven of all their sin and they go to paradise.”

And that’s when the room exploded.

I leaned back and watched as the room erupted in dozens of objections, men turning and arguing with another, hands gesticulating in the air, men on their feet in protest, popcorn and sunflower seeds flying and spilling onto the couches and the floor.

Behold. The scandal of the gospel.

The good news really is foolishness to those whose eyes are still blinded to the truth, those who do not yet understand that if this is not the case, if there is no hope for someone like Hitler, then there is no hope for them.

Thankfully, once things calmed down a little bit, I got to expand on this truth a little bit more, that it’s good news that the scandal is true. The worst sinner in all of history can be completely and utterly forgiven and made new. And that is amazing news for everyone, but in particular, it’s good news for the worst sinner that I know; namely, myself. I can be and have been scandalously pardoned and welcomed into paradise. Yes, if there is hope for a genocidal maniac, I explained, then there is hope for every one of us.

The scene in our living room that night reminds me that it is so hard, even impossible, to believe this rather than to stumble over it. But the miracle of the new birth shows us that the blind and offended can and do come to see and love the beauty at the heart of the scandal. 

The vilest offender who truly believes
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives

Pray for us. We restart part of this group as a structured Bible study later on this week – and we’re hoping that more of these gospel grenades will hit home.

We’ve raised 15k of our 20k goal this summer! Would you consider supporting our work? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

The Perseverance of the (Fractious) Saints

One of the hard things about returning to Caravan City after a couple of months away was hearing that two brothers in the local-language church have broken off to do their own thing. Tempted apparently by promises of money and position by a group of Central Asian Anabaptists of ill-repute (yes, really), they made secret plans to become the leaders of their local language group. Rather than seeking counsel from their pastors or fellow church members, these men simply announced what they had already decided to do. Then, along with this announcement they threw out a bunch of random complaints, seemingly trying to find some that would stick and justify their departure.

This is a sad development, but one that has happened so many times here it almost feels like a trope. A promising new believer does well for a year or two, truly growing in knowledge and ability. Unfortunately, character does not grow as quickly as knowledge and ability do. This often leads to a dangerous stage where a local believer sitting under faithful discipleship has a head full of knowledge, lots of idealistic energy, and lots of ideas they want to see realized ASAP. The honeymoon stage with their church and their leaders is, by now, long over, so this believer is seeing some genuine shortcomings and weaknesses – along with many things that they misunderstand as such. Quietly, discontentment begins to grow and fester.

Often, all that is needed to spark a breakaway is some other ministry that finds and is impressed with the local believer, sympathizes with their complaints, and offers them money and/or a position if they would come and be a leader in their efforts. Sometimes, this is actual headhunting. Other times, it’s a well-meaning group that doesn’t know the local believer well enough to spot the character issues that have kept their church from giving them more leadership responsibilities. I’ve seen both. And neither tend to end well.

This dynamic mirrors something common in the tribal culture of our people. Often, sons and nephews of a tribal chief will chafe under the leadership of the rightful head of the tribe. Rival tribes know this, so they secretly approach these younger men, offering to support them if they will break away with a cohort of their tribe loyal to them. In this way, they can weaken their rival tribe’s position and strengthen their own. Our people group’s history is full of this kind of thing. I would go as far as to say this pattern of seizing power rather than waiting patiently for it seems to be a besetting sin of the men in this culture.

When it comes to churches, a few bold wolf-types might attempt to take over the church from within. But for many, it’s easier to break away and start something new under someone else’s patronage. Sometimes, these fractious men are, in fact, dangerous predators. But other times they’re just foolish and impatient. Most likely, the two brothers who broke away this summer are in the latter category. That means there’s more hope for them to eventually come back around and repent. However, I’ve rarely seen the sort of humility required for something like that to happen. More often than not, breaking away from a church that has nurtured you makes it all too easy to break away from the new patron and their church, and then the next one, and then the next one, etc., etc. Much like getting your first tattoo or plastic surgery, once you have broken away from a church, you tend to keep doing it.

However, just because humble repentance and reconciliation is rare doesn’t mean it never happens. Unhealthy church leaders can humbly repent and seek reconciliation. An example from Poet City reminds me that true believers will, eventually, come back around and pursue faithfulness and repentance. Even when it seems unlikely, true believers will even keep doing this until the end – and in this way demonstrate that their faith is real. This is, after all, what perseverance of the saints means. See how the doctrinal statement from our international church puts it:

“We believe that genuine believers are only those who endure to the end. Their persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark which distinguishes them from those who falsely profess faith in Christ. Christians may fall into sin, which grieves the Spirit, impairs their graces and comforts, brings reproach on the church and temporal judgments on themselves, yet they shall be renewed again to repentance, and be kept by the power of God through faith for salvation.” (1 Jn 3:9; 5:18; 1 Jn 2:19; Matt 13:20-21; Phil 1:6; Heb 13:5; Jude 24-25)

Yes, even if they are a fractious believer, if they truly belongs to Jesus, they will, sooner or later, come to their senses, repent, and walk in faithfulness. This is the evidence of the genuine faith within them.

Back in the beginning stages of our church plant in Poet City, we made a serious enemy of one of the few local pastors around. This man had a reputation for not playing well with others and for ruling his little house church with an iron hand, like a little strongman. His church was made up of a group of believers who had somehow survived the implosion of the house church I had been connected to back in my single days – itself a group that had been formed by a promising local leader who had prematurely seized power from his gentle Australian mentors. All this, along with some theological concerns, meant that healthy partnership at the time wasn’t really possible. It also meant that when a local family stopped attending his church and started attending our church plant, we were mostly okay with it.

A follow-up meeting with this pastor about a possible transfer of these believers from his church to ours did not go well at all. He claimed that these believers belonged to him and that they had no right or freedom to ever join another church. We tried to reason gently with him, but to no avail. Long story short, he ended up raging and cursing at us and telling us we were out to destroy the church. After that, didn’t think we’d ever hear from him again. At least not in any friendly sense.

Imagine my surprise when, eight years later, I heard that he had humbly approached my teammate to ask forgiveness for that conversation – and to ask if they could become friends and partners. A couple years on now, this relationship is still warm and happy. Why? Because this pastor is a true believer – and sooner or later, true believers repent and come back around. Even the fractious ones.

All this gives me hope for these two brothers who have foolishly broken off. Give it some time, give it years or decades if necessary. If they’re truly brothers, repentance and reconciliation is in their future. If not, then God has been merciful to prune his church of those who appear to belong but who actually don’t.

But I will keep praying for these fractious believers. If they are indeed saints, then we’ll be hearing from them again.

We’ve raised 15k of our 20k goal this summer! Would you consider supporting our work? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Unsplash

Thief! Hold Him! Hit Him!

There was a lot of crime in the Melanesian country where I grew up. Much of this was the result of the breakdown of old tribal structures and community as locals moved to the cities and towns to find work, only to find themselves caught up in money problems and addictions. It’s a story that has played out all over the world as previously isolated tribal societies crash, head-on, into modernity.

This is not to say that their previous tribal isolation was better. On the contrary, there are few societies so dark and so stripped of common grace as a pre-Christian, animistic jungle tribe. The whole noble savage thing is a convenient fiction created by Westerners who apparently needed this fantasy to make sense of their own society’s continued brokenness. It is, to use a newer term, a luxury belief, one you can only afford if you yourself are not living in that kind of situation or truly friends with those who are.

The prevalence of robbery and armed assault, especially in the cities and towns, meant that foreigners and missionaries needed to be alert and intentional whenever heading to the market, the grocery store, or even just going for a walk. Men needed to be careful with their wallets and backpacks due to pickpockets (and presumably now phones as well). They needed to walk several paces behind any women with them in order to keep an eye out for any potential trouble.

Women or girls needed to dress modestly, usually in skirts and loose clothing, and to use purses or bags that they could strap across their torsos. The local woven bags with long straps that both men and women use in that culture were perfect for this. Wearing these bags of spun plant fibers, fur, or colorful yarn also signaled to locals a respect and appreciation for their culture that won friends when out in public and distinguished you from the cash-laden tourists.

In this kind of high-crime context, my mom was a stellar example of how knowing the local language and culture, and going everywhere with local friends, could lead to a surprising degree of freedom and favor. My mom is a short, petite woman, and for most of our years living in Melanesia, she was a young widow, an easy target. But she tended to experience far fewer security incidents than other foreign women because of the posture she struck with the locals. No matter the country, locals are able to pick up on which foreigners extend a humble, genuine friendship of equality. And not only does this mean you make lifelong (and sometimes eternal) friends. It also makes you far safer. Many of the MK girls in my school also did an admirable job of navigating these dynamics well, despite the many challenges.

But even the most careful or skillful sometimes get careless – or become a target even though they did everything ‘right.’ In case we were ever attacked, locals and adult missionaries taught us that we had options. In particular, other locals who were present would leap to our defense if you called out in the trade language, “Thief! Hold him! Hit him!!!” This is because even though crime was so prevalent, it was still despised in the local honor-shame culture. So, calling out this kind of phrase while an attack was happening could mean the sudden appearance of a crowd of local vigilantes eager to help you – and to teach the thief a good lesson with their fists.

I’d heard the stories. But I’d never seen it happen, nor been forced to use this defense mechanism myself. One part of me hoped I’d never have to. Another part of me was curious. Would a mob of friendly locals really materialize out of nowhere and rally to my defense if I remembered to yell the magic words?

One afternoon in my 11th or 12th grade year, my mom, I, and one of the girls in my class went into town together to do some errands. This girl was a close friend with whom I was in an on-again, off-again relationship. I believe when this incident took place, we were in another season of deciding to just stay good friends. I’m pretty sure there were some feelings still there, at least on my part. High school is a confusing time for the heart. But we were committed to navigating the confusion in such a way that we could preserve our friendship as fellow believers, for which I remain very thankful.

Regardless, there was enough trust there for her family to feel comfortable with her going into town with us, even though not having an adult man present was technically against mission policy. My family, for understandable reasons, was often granted an exception to this rule.

We had finished up our errands when we decided, on a whim, to stop into a little shop on Main Street to get some deep-fried snacks for the ride home. I loved (and still miss) the deep-fried flour balls made in that country called skon. Cheap, hot, and sprinkled with salt, I was always down to munch on a bag of skons on the way back from a town or river trip.

My mom chose to remain with the car out front (another one of those security practices that was commonplace) while I went into the snack shop with my friend. Because it was such a short stop, she left her shoulder bag in the car and just grabbed her little money pouch. It was small inside the shop, with a little greasy lobby area for customers and a huge glass display case full of fried snacks illuminated with a yellow-red light. I went up to the little window and put in an order while my friend waited by the wall a couple of meters behind me. The heavy aroma of fried goodness and grease wafted all around us.

I’m not sure what exactly caused me to turn around. But when I did, I saw something strange. My friend’s face had gone sheet white, her eyes wide and her mouth open in silent shock. She was locked in a quiet but panicked struggle with a short, muscled local man. I could only see him from behind. One hand, I could see, was desperately trying to rip my friend’s money pouch out of her hand. I couldn’t see his other hand.

You always wonder what you’ll do when faced with a situation that requires a split-second decision to act. I’m convinced you can never truly know until you’re in it. But it sure helps, for boys and men in particular, to have repeatedly made the decision ahead of time that, if at all possible, we will act. Stories of courage from the Bible, good books, and stories from my dad’s life helped me make these many small preparatory decisions. Even Bilbo Baggins played a role in growing my resolve to be courageous. But when the moment finally came, all I can say is that, by the grace of God, I acted.

I charged across the room and threw my arm around the assailant’s neck in a headlock to pull him off my friend. With a burst of strength that really surprised me, I jerked him out the door while yelling something at him in English. He was a much bigger guy than I was in terms of muscle mass, but in that moment, it seemed like he weighed nothing at all. In the couple of seconds it took for us to stumble out of the shop, he spun around and swung a small blade at my stomach. It passed a few inches from me, and I remember immediately registering the flash of metal and letting him go.

The assailant then started running down the sidewalk as I stood, blinking. Suddenly, I remembered the phrase I was supposed to yell.

“THIEF! HOLD HIM! HIT HIM!!!” I yelped, hoping someone would respond.

Would it actually work? As he rounded the corner, I saw a few bystanders start to take off after him. Then I went back into the shop to check on my friend.

She was, of course, very shaken up and barely able to respond to my questions. But it seemed she was okay. The man had pressed the blade against her stomach, but not cut her. She had locked up in panic, meaning that even though she wanted to, she could neither scream nor let go of her money pouch. I saw that coins were scattered all over the floor. Being myself in a pretty confused state of mind, I started shakily picking up the coins off the floor and asking the staff behind the counter if we could still get our order.

We waited for a minute or two, minds flooded with adrenaline and hands shaking, when a police vehicle screeched to a stop in front of the shop.

“We were parked around the corner,” the smiling officer said, “when we saw this man being chased by a big crowd right toward us. We got to him before the crowd could – lucky man. He’s in the back now. They said he attacked you. Is that true?”

I nodded yes.

“Follow us to the station, then.”

In a blur, the three of us drove down the street to the police station. Inside, we were ushered into a dirty and faded blue room with holes in the walls where the assailant was sitting in a chair, hands handcuffed behind his back.

The police officer was clearly enjoying the whole situation and continued smiling in a disconcerting way. Many of the police in that country are corrupt and heavy-handed in their tactics, demanding bribes on the highways and burning down whole villages in response to tribal warfare. The handful that we knew who were believers were markedly different. But this big man seemed to be of the more common, unregenerate variety.

“Is this the man who attacked you?” he asked, lifting up the attacker’s face.

“Yes,” I responded, “That’s him.”

Immediately, the officer swung hard and punched the man in the face. The man whimpered.

Trying to process what was going on, I continued to answer questions and to describe what happened.

“Did he have a weapon?”

“Yes, a small knife.”

“Where’s the knife!!!” he roared at the man, dealing another savage blow to the face. The man didn’t respond.

“Hahaha! You don’t see policing like this in America, do you?” the officer asked us, grinning like a villain.

He leaned over the man. “Where are you from?” he asked him softly.

“Okapa…” the man groaned.

“OKAPA!!!” the officer roared, kneeing the sitting man in the face. More cries of pain.

By now, there was a puddle of blood pooling on the floor from the man’s nose. The drips were spattering on my shoes. One look at my mom and my friend told me that this experience might be far more traumatizing than the actual assault itself.

“So, do you want to press charges?” the officer turned and asked us.

“No!” My mom and I said together. “No… no one was hurt. And he’s already gotten enough punishment.”

“Too bad – lucky man,” the officer said, shaking his head and sneering at the man in the chair.

We got out of there as fast as we could and drove back to the mission base in a daze.

I felt terrible for what had happened, thinking my friend’s parents would never allow her to go to town with us again. However, they were extremely kind and encouraging, telling me they were proud of me and they’d be happy for their daughter to go into town with me any time. As a young man, that was one of the kindest things they could have said.

Over the next year or so, my friends and I did continue going into town, though we never went back into that particular snack shop. Thankfully, there were no more big incidents like this one.

Over time, we continued to shudder at the attempted robbery and the whole police station scene. But there was one scene of the whole event that we were later able to laugh about.

And that scene was of a skinny white boy standing in the street and squawking, “Stilman! Holim em! Paitim em!!!” (Thief! Hold him! Hit him!) and the hapless robber being pursued around the corner by an angry mob.

It really did work, after all.

There are countries out there, sadly, where strangers will not come to one another’s aid when someone attacks. But that country in Melanesia is not one of them. No, if anything, you may want to be careful rallying the mob to your defense, unless absolutely necessary. The whole time, the police, even with everything they did, were acting like they had saved the man from an even worse fate.

Yikes.

We’ve got 17k of our 20k goal still to raise this summer. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region, and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Unsplash

Strange Encounters in Country Church Parking Lots

If you’ve ever lived near a country church parking lot, then you know there’s a lot of odd stuff that goes on there. And I don’t mean the church-related traffic.

For two different seasons while stateside, we lived in parsonages next to churches in rural Kentucky. And thus it was that I began to learn about the many and varied ways in which a community makes use of that wide-open asphalt space.

Strangers meet up at these parking lots to exchange items purchased on Facebook Marketplace. Some take their kids there to practice driving. Others pull over to change tires or to look under their hood when their car starts smoking or making suspicious noises, even leaving vehicles overnight if need be. Police cars will pull in to camp out for a while and keep an eye on the road. I don’t know if Pokémon Go is still a thing or not, but that was one reason during a certain season for many of the suspicious-looking cars that would randomly pull in for a few minutes, hover, then suddenly take off.

Mosques in our area of Central Asia have 24-7 bathroom facilities available to the public. Anyone, Muslim or not, can pull over and make use of this infrastructure if needed. In a similar way, rural church parking lots function as a kind of community resource, a private piece of property that is available for anyone to use for certain reasonable needs. I don’t know that anyone ever consciously agreed to this arrangement, but it has developed nonetheless.

However, others seem to make use of these parking lots in ways that, if the church knew about it, would clearly violate this unwritten contract. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some drug deals going down next to the old Baptist church late at night. Another time, I was startled to stumble on a random wandering man just sitting in the darkness behind the church when I was taking out the trash. Then there are the vehicles that would pull in after dark and just sit, lights on, pointed at the parsonage, for hours on end – almost as if they were watching us. Sometimes I would go out and straighten up some stuff outside in case the sight of a person keeping an eye on the place would make them conscious of their creepiness and cause them to drive off.

But none of these activities caused my heart to leap into my throat like what happened one Sunday at 2 am.

After a late night of treating diabetic lows, my wife and I were finally asleep when we were shocked awake by a horrific screeching sound. We bolted upright in bed and noticed that strange lights were flashing through the blinds and into the room. Disoriented and bleary-eyed, I peered out through the blinds. But all I could see was that the air was choked with a strange, flowing smoke or mist, oddly lit up in a way that didn’t make any sense for 2 am. The loud screeching and roaring wasn’t stopping.

Was our city under attack? Had the neighboring regimes finally had enough and decided to invade? Wait, no, we weren’t in Central Asia. We were in rural Kentucky. What then? Had some demon-UFO come to harass us like something straight out of the Haunted Cosmos podcast?

Then, all at once, I realized what was happening. The church secretary had foretold that such a time would come. And she had solemnly deputized me, for such a time as this, to be the guardian of the church parking lot.

I girded up my loins, threw on a gray bathrobe, grabbed a bright flashlight, and rushed out to the porch. In my bare feet, I ran into the smoke to confront the foes with all the bleary-eyed middle-aged righteous indignation I could muster.

The teenagers had come. Yes, they had come to do donuts and spin-outs with their little souped-up sports cars.

Now, there’s nothing in particular that I would normally have against teenagers doing donuts and spin-outs in an empty lot. After all, I used to enjoy doing them with my ATV back in high school in Melanesia. But Miss Peggy, the secretary, had told me they had just paid an arm and a leg to redo the parking lot surface and that this kind of activity would seriously damage it again.

Plus, it was 2 am. And they had nearly given my family a heart attack.

Through the clouds of smoke and screeches caused by spinning rubber, I staggered, shining my light in as menacing a manner as I could and yelling something terrifying like, “HEY… YOU KIDS!” My hair was wild, and my eyes were wide. All that was missing were some slippers on my feet and a shotgun in my hand to channel the timeless image of the old grumpy man out to ‘teach them kids a lesson.’

I must have spooked them nonetheless. Perhaps the lights cast a giant shadow of my figure onto the grey clouds of rubber smoke. Or, perhaps it was just the unexpected sight of a jumped-up, hollering dad in a bathrobe at 2 am that did it. But the faces my flashlight caught looked spooked and pale, and the three cars quickly sped off into the darkness. Leaving me standing there barefoot in the growing quiet and stinky haze, unkempt yet victorious, wishing I’d had the wits to holler something more intimidating like “ALLAHU AKBAAAAR!!!“

Oh well, next time.

Not surprisingly, we were late to church the next morning. I scowled as we crossed the parking lot and saw all the black marks the kids had made during their nighttime antics.

However, I was glad to inform Miss Peggy that I had indeed scared the intruders off. And that I’d be glad to do so again should the need arise. And that, yes, we would love some more coffee to help us stay awake during Sunday school.

The teenagers tried to come back to do donuts and spin-outs a few times after that, but I recognized their cars and was on to them at that point. I even got to talk with one of them during one of these follow-up attempts, to tell him that I had his license plate number and would have to do something with that information if they came back to do donuts again.

To his credit, he responded with a very respectful “Yessir… we won’t do it again, sir.”

I realized that in that season I had become the guardian of the church parking lot. A modest, yet worthy role. After all, rural church parking lots are weird places. Somebody’s got to keep an eye on them.

And having compared notes with others over the years, I know that I am not the only one to notice the strange things that happen in these locales. If you’ve seen some weird stuff in church parking lots yourself, be sure to let us know in the comments.

This summer, we are looking to raise 19.5k, half for our family’s support needs and half for the cost of writing, translating, and printing solid resources for local believers. Would you consider supporting our work and the Church in Central Asia in this way? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

Pastors are needed for international churches in our region and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Ees Not for You!

Sometime in the middle of our first term, my wife and I went on a much-needed lunch date. Our neighborhood was built on a long hill, at the tallest end of which was a nice hotel. We decided that it would be nice to check out the hotel restaurant and see if it would be the kind of place both close enough and pleasant enough to become a regular date spot.

Like many of the nice hotels in Poet City, the restaurant was on one of the highest floors so that guests and patrons could enjoy the views of the surrounding mountains. We took the elevator up and entered the bright dining space. As we sat down, things were looking hopeful for a refreshing lunch date together.

At the time, we had a couple of energetic toddlers and we were in the thick of full-time language learning. Both my wife and I were laboring hard to build evangelistic relationships with locals and to also invest in the few scattered local believers that were around. I was working as an English teacher and taking seminary classes online. Our team was often engaged in conflict related to personality clashes as well as the sort of arguments a team easily falls into when the ministry is mostly hypothetical and there’s little actual church planting work yet to ground the discussions in reality. Electricity and water supply were also quite bad.

All of this meant I was really hoping this rare chance to go on a date would be a life-giving time for my wife. I was, by this point, waking up to the reality that it is exponentially more difficult to be a female missionary in Central Asia than to be a male missionary like me. I could see my wife slowly wilting under all the pressure.

Now, there are many things I appreciate about honor-shame, hierarchical cultures like that of our locals. But of course, there are also downsides. One of these downsides is an unfortunate bent toward the stuffy and pretentious in certain kinds of establishments. Picture old world class snobbery and you’ll get a sense of what I mean here. Often, it’s not even the VIPs themselves who act this way, but those who work for them. If you don’t send the right signals through your car or clothing or reputation or otherwise, it’s not uncommon to have receptionists, waiters, or others in contexts like this treating you with a sort of high-nosed stiffery that feels demeaning no matter what your cultural background. But it’s even more jarring in our context because it’s so different from the many daily honorable interactions with Central Asian neighbors or shop owners or even gas canister men. When the stranger on the street giving you directions refers to you as “Dearest older brother” and invites you on the spot to join his family for a meal, it makes you wonder what kind of radical code-switch has taken place such that the Central Asian staff in certain establishments are instead channeling Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Sometimes we experience this sort of treatment because my wife and I have dark enough hair and complexion that we can get mistaken for locals. We know that if we drop the fact that we’re actually Americans we would be quickly promoted to the VIP class treatment and everyone would scramble to be on their most honorable behavior. But occasionally it can be useful to hold that info close to our chest for a while, even if it’s just to see how our local friends get treated in these sorts of environments – or to simply quietly protest the silly partiality on display.

We must have looked like locals that day because when we came in the restaurant and sat down, we received no special attention. In fact, we received almost no attention at all. Even though the restaurant was largely empty, we sat for quite some time at our table, ignored by the wait staff. Eventually, we figured it must be up to us to initiate the service. We tried to catch the eye of the several staff stiffly standing or bustling around, but to no avail. But we did notice a lunch buffet table over on the far side of the room. Maybe we had misunderstood the lunch system here and it was a self-serve buffet?

My wife got up to go and inspect the table. And this, finally, got one of the waiters moving. He scurried across the room, not to assist my wife, but to tsk her.

“T-t-t-t-t,” he tongue clicked at her, wagging his finger and furrowing his brow. “Ees not forr you!“

My wife stopped in her tracks, eyebrows raised at this unexpected scolding.

“Okay,” she responded, “Well, do you have a menu then?”

The waiter exhaled loudly, seeming to be very inconvenienced by this burdensome request. And motioned for her to have a seat again.

She sat back down and we made faces at each other, sharing in the surprise and the absurdity of it all. I was reminded of my wife’s opinion that everyone who goes into ministry should first spend some time in food service, not only to learn to patiently bear with others who are treating you poorly, but also to reveal if you are able to humbly and consistently treat others well, even in a stressful environment. Let us hope that our waiter had no pretensions of someday entering the pastorate.

When my wife pointed out something on the menu that looked promising, I siezed my opportunity to lean across the table with great self-import, and whisper,

“T-t-t, Ees not forr you!“

She gave me an unamused look over her menu, but then cracked a smile. By the time we had left that restaurant we had tsked and scolded each other several times in the style of our friendly waiter, and a new inside quote was thereby added to our family’s collection. To this day, you might catch us using it in situations where we need to playfully shoot something down or to make light of some request that’s been denied by others.

We never went back to that restaurant. It was, after all, the kind of place that seemed like they really didn’t want customers. For my part, I also remembered that in a season when my wife was in need of kindness and rest, she had been treated somewhat disrespectfully there. That doesn’t make a husband want to take his wife back there for a date.

It was almost a decade later when I learned that that same hotel and restaurant, of all places, had been ground zero for an all-night firefight, and blown to smithereens. See, Poet City is largely controlled by one political party that is itself controlled by one ruling family – sort of a tribe/mafia/militia/one-party fusion, as it were. The patriarch of this family died some years ago, which means his various sons and nephews have been jockeying for power ever since, and the whole patronage network of alliances has been re-shuffling. The nephew the patriarch had put in charge of the elite counter-terrorism forces owned the hotel where we had gone on our date. But a few years ago, he’d had a falling out with one of the patriarch’s sons, and had been confined to house arrest in his mansion on top of the hill, right next to the hotel. 

For several years, things stayed calm. The nephew and his loyal armed forces stayed confined to the top of the hill, while his cousin gradually consolidated power around himself. Then, suddenly, the son launched an all out assault late one night, with tanks and RPGs and small arms fire pounding the hotel where the nephew’s forces were mounting a desperate defense.

Friends of ours living nearby told us they were awakened in the middle of the night by what sounded like an all-out war. Not surprisingly, the son’s forces shot that hotel to pieces, and eventually the nephew and his soldiers surrendered.

News of this reached us in Caravan City the next day. I was talking about it with a teammate when my wife overheard us.

“Wait, isn’t that the hotel in our old neighborhood?”

“Yep, the one just a short walk from where we lived. It’s where went for that lunch date. You remember, Ees not forr you!“

My wife’s jaw dropped. “They blew up the Ees not forr you place?”

“They sure did. Apparently the whole building is shot to pieces with bullet holes and craters from tank shells.”

We were quiet for a moment as we took it all in. Our corner of Central Asia can seem so safe and stable. Then, all of the sudden, somebody’s blowing up their cousin’s hotel right in the middle of a well-to-do residential neighborhood.

“You know,” I said to our teammate. “I believe the justice of God is a perfect, detailed, and mysterious thing. Years ago, we went on a date to that hotel. And they were quite rude to my wife in a season where she was working so hard to be faithful amidst all kinds of hardships… I would not put it beyond God to factor even those small slights against his daughter into what happened to that hotel. ‘You’re going to treat my daughter that way? Tsk at her like that??? Well, I’ve taken note of that, and it will be accounted for.'”

My teammate and my wife looked at me somewhat incredulously.

“What?” I said, “Until we get to eternity, we simply don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised if at least a couple of those bullets or tank shells were direct recompense for their conduct to her that day. You guys remember what happened to the Afghan monarchy because they destroyed that church building, right?”

They still didn’t look convinced.

Of course, there’s no way of knowing on this side of eternity. And often God’s justice is postponed until a much later date. But I am convinced that, every once in a while, if you are unusually rude to one of God’s beloved daughters, one of his ambassadors, he just may allow your hotel and restaurant to get blown to smithereens.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Unsplash

A Central Asian Church’s Treasures

Were you to accompany me to the Central Asian church where my wife and I help lead worship, to sit with us in our usual row, and to look around you, this is what you would see. 

Up at the front, the young local elder is leading the introduction to communion. He’s doing a good job explaining the meaning of the Lord’s Supper and who should or should not partake. He smiles as he unpacks all this, but he’s got dark circles under his eyes. He’s grieving the loss of a relationship with a believing gal in Poet City whom he had been close to marrying. He’s having a lot of trouble sleeping because of this, crashing at other believers’ places several times a week to try and find some relief. As the only believer in an unbelieving and unhealthy family, home is understandably not the most restful place nor the best place to get counsel when struggling (single men here continue to live at home until married). 

Just in front of us, on the right, is another young single brother. He’s a tall, awkward 20-year-old whom the members of the church love dearly in spite of his cage-stage Calvinism (fueled by his line-by-line reading of The Institutes through Google Translate). This young man is a voracious reader and aspiring writer. But he’s been wearing hoods and hats to church for a month or so now, ever since his dad blew up at him again because of his faith and shaved off part of his hair, an action taken only when someone has deeply shamed the family. He’s waiting for it to grow back and trying not to mention it.

In front of him is a single American brother, one of our teammates, manning the PowerPoint. After getting a brain tumor and miraculously surviving, he decided he’d like to spend the rest of his days on the mission field. Language learning doesn’t come easy to him after brain cancer, but he’s exemplary in his diligence, and he shares the gospel with as many taxi drivers as he can. He’s one of our kids’ favorite grown ups around for many reasons, including that he likes to show them funny clips of The Lord of the Rings dubbed into our local language. Central Asian Gandalf at the bridge of Khazad-Dum is fast becoming one of our family’s inside quotes.

At the front on the left, sits another elder and his family, dear American friends of ours and the ones who planted this church over the last several years. We got to be a part of some of the earliest (unsuccessful) attempts to gather living room groups with them back pre-Covid, and it’s been such a joy to move back to Caravan City and to see how their faithful perseverance has led to the birth of a new, healthy local church – the first open and healthy local language church in this large city. These friends are not flashy, but humble, gifted, steady plodders, the kind of people willing to gently but stubbornly follow the Bible and call local believers to do the same. Six years ago, their church planting plans were dismissed by others in the city as neither contextual nor realistic. Now, the church they’ve planted is becoming an example to the missionary community of how church planting can actually work in the hard soil of Caravan City.

Behind us is a short, middle-aged woman, one of a number of members who are political refugees from the country next door. She’s a faithful and kind church member, but she’s often struggled to find enough work. She was helping with childcare for some of the expat families in Caravan City, but most of them left during the war, meaning much of her income has since dried up. She and the others in her situation can end up stuck in our region indefinitely, sometimes for decades. They’re not fully legal, not able to go back home, and not able to travel on to another country. They often struggle with hopelessness as they consider their future. 

Behind her sit a greying middle-aged couple, some of the very first attendees of this church back when it was just a little group meeting in a living room. They are kind and dependable church members, and every week she prepares the delicious food that the church shares together after the service. But it’s been a hard year for their marriage. Their fights at home got so bad that it led their college-aged son, also a believer, to attempt suicide. Since then, and with much counsel, they seem to be doing better. As refugees themselves, finances have also been really tight given how the war has damaged the local economy. 

Near them sits a young man from Caravan City who came to faith last year, joined the church, then quickly went and married a Muslim girl. This was in part because of family pressure, but also a choice made against pastoral counsel. In spite of the great danger of this course of action, it seems that God has been merciful to him and granted him true repentance. His unbelieving wife now regularly attends the services with him and even desires to help out the church as she can. She is a genuine friend now to some of the other believing ladies, who hope that she will also come to saving faith. Her husband, quietly a poet at heart, often pulls me aside to share a new local proverb. He’ll also ask good questions about how to grow as a husband or evangelist, seeming to have a genuine desire to grow in real spiritual wisdom. I am also grateful for him as one of the few who can actually clap on beat.

Across the aisle from them sits a local brother in his late 30s, from a city a couple of hours away up in the mountains. He will tell you that he was a bad husband and father before believing, and that his apostasy from Islam to follow Jesus was the last straw for his wife. She and their kids separated from him, remaining in their native city while he moved to Caravan City for work. He’s worked a succession of hard jobs, such as driving a gas canister exchange truck on 18-hour shifts. Thus far, his wife has been unwilling to reconcile, even though she can see that he’s now genuinely changed in some significant ways. In spite of the constant grief of missing his family, this brother is also one of the church’s most mischievous members, regularly dropping witty remarks and engaging in good-hearted teasing. Even though we’re the same age, he loves to point out how many gray hairs are now salting my chin and head and how that means he’ll have to soon start calling me “uncle dear.” He’s also a gifted poet, composing line after line in his head and recording them on his phone as he drives around the city. He and the young Calvinist have become fast friends. Together with the brother who likes proverbs, they are shaping up to be a formidable evangelistic trio (in between the constant jokes about ‘Jan Kalveen’).

Near him is a young, quiet man with a short beard and glasses. He’s a new believer who came to faith in part because of a guy’s discussion night we were hosting in our apartment until the war started. A jaded, post-Islamic, post-Christian Jungian psychiatrist was a regular at the group. In spite of his dismissal of the gospel as merely one manifestation of the collective subconscious, he said he had a depressed patient who might be really helped by Christianity. He invited this struggling man to the group, where he heard the gospel from the trio mentioned above and others of us, accepting the invitation to come to church. Now, this quiet, bespectacled friend has been born again and is being discipled by the local elder.

In front of him sits a prospective member. He’s recently shared his testimony with the church, hoping they’ll accept his profession of faith in Jesus and welcome him into membership. His story echoed many others I’ve heard over the years, since it included a dream about Jesus, one that stood out from his other dreams so much so that he couldn’t seem to forget it for years afterward. That dream eventually led him to a Bible, and he came to faith somewhere in the middle of the book of Matthew, again, similar to many of my other local friends’ testimonies. 

Near him sit two more prospective members, a married couple. The husband had been a guerrilla fighter from the time he was a boy, and heard the gospel this from past year from our old friend, Frank*. Because of the terrible things he had seen and done, and the resultant PTSD, this man was terrified of sharing his testimony with the church, and his membership was stalled for a while. But he did so just this past week, speaking of the things he’d seen in careful, general terms, but speaking of the hope of the gospel in gloriously clear detail. He had told me beforehand that he was terrified of sharing the kind of things that would send his mind spiraling back into the darkness, from which he might not be able to come back. But Jesus gave him and his wife strength to testify, and they will soon be baptized, along with the brother who had the dream.

At the back stands the local deacon, another former guerrilla fighter now turned gentle servant of Christ. His two believing adult children are also members. His son helps with the soundboard every week and is a language helper for some of our teammates. His daughter, also a former soldier, joins us as a vocalist for the worship team most weeks, helps write new songs, and serves as the local language teacher at our kids’ TCK school. She was the first one to come to faith in the family, after her dad randomly found a Bible on the ground in the bazaar and gave it to her. Then, one by one, she prayed and led her dad and brother to faith as well.

She sits with her arm around another single gal who’s a believing member. Her father was a diplomat, so she grew up in multiple foreign countries before her family returned to the homeland. Her dad isn’t a serious Muslim, so he let her pursue this Jesus thing, believing it to be only a phase. But now that he understands it to be a long-term, serious conversion, he and her brothers have taken to regularly mocking her. Her mom takes a different approach. Whenever this young woman gets out her Bible to do her devotions at the kitchen table, her mom conspicuously gets out her Quran and starts studying as well – even mimicking her daughter’s highlighting of her holy book, even though good Muslims should never highlight or write notes in the Quran! With this kind of home environment, you can understand why she is visibly soaking up the chance to be around other believers.

With that, plus a few more foreigners and some local visitors, our scan of the room is complete. 

What would you make of this body of believers were you to see it in person like this? It’s mostly made up of messy, first-generation, young Christians. There are layers and layers of trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and dark, broken pasts. Most don’t have enough work. Many need to take a smoke break outside before and after the service, including the deacon. Most are not well-connected or well-educated or initially that impressive. All are fighting stubborn sins which occasionally (and publicly) blow up on the other believers – and that while living in a society that might turn on them at any second.

Would this motley crew of believers be the ones you would choose to turn Caravan City upside down? Are these the kind of strategic leaders who, as the members of the first healthy church, will lead to the inbreaking of the kingdom? 

Let’s remember what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 1:

26) Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27) But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28) God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29) so that no one may boast before him. 30) It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31) Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”

Yes, my hope is that were you to visit this church with me, you would, as Paul writes of the messy Corinthians, see the very wisdom of God. Indeed, that you would perceive that you are seeing the very treasures of God and of the church, as an early church deacon in Rome, Lorenzo, once put it.

Every once in a while, I remember a conversation I had years ago in a Louisville coffee shop with a veteran missionary. He lamented how we’d never be successful church planters in Muslim contexts if we kept gathering “the freaks and the rejects, the nobodies.” I remember this statement, and I shake my head. The nature of the kingdom is so very different from what the missiologists assume will be effective or strategic. Yes, God sometimes saves the chiefs, the rich, the influential, those who have it together (in a worldly sense anyway). But so often his delight is to save and use the unexpected, the overlooked, those with dark pasts and a struggling present, those rejected by their families. Even the mischievous and poetic delivery drivers who are quietly grieving, and the former guerrilla fighters who still very much need to take that smoke break. 

Yes, were we to scan the room, we would see their rough pasts and their still somewhat rough present. 

But what of their future? Their future is that they will become more glorious than even the angels, that they will be the ruling and shining heirs of the resurrection. That is true of each of these believers I’ve described to you here. It is, for those who have eyes to see, what we could see in any true local church.

The foolish shaming the wise. The weak shaming the strong. The treasures of the kingdom. 

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 school year. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Unsplash

The Mullah from Matches Village

Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim* had left us downright speechless – quite the feat considering the rest of us had stayed up all night arguing.

The setting was that I’d been invited to spend the night in the university dormitory. But instead of getting any sleep, a group of local students and I had stayed up, engaged in rigorous but friendly debate about the claims of Islam vs. the claims of the gospel. The most vocal and passionate of these students, Job and Robert*, were from a rural area about an hour and a half northwest of Poet City.

I had recently learned a new way to share the gospel with Muslims, one that focused on telling a sequence of stories about Old Testament prophets and their sacrifices. This story set built and built until the climax where John the Baptist sees Jesus and cries out, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” In this way, I pressed the case that all the true prophets agreed that Jesus had to die as the final sacrifice and rise from the dead in order for there to be forgiveness of sins.

This was a new line of reasoning for these young Muslim men, one they had never encountered before. I could tell that a lot of them were struggling to answer the logic that came from hearing story after story, many of which Islam shared, that clearly pointed to Jesus being God’s promised sacrifice. The Qur’an says that its message agrees with the previous holy books. So why did it seem there was such central disagreement when it came to this theme of salvation by sacrifice alone?

But Job and Robert, in particular, weren’t going to give in. Robert’s father was a mullah, an Islamic preacher, so he knew his Islamic orthodoxy and apologetics very well.

“I will never let Jesus be the sacrifice for my sins! I will be the sacrifice for my own sins!” he eventually proclaimed.

It was sobering to hear Robert say this after a whole night of debate, but at least he was rejecting the gospel from a place of clarity. Far too often, our unbelieving friends reject the gospel without actually understanding what we’re trying to say.

At some point before sunrise, Job had called a mullah friend that he knew from back home. After he had woken him up and explained the situation to him, he had somehow convinced him to get on a bus and come to our city. This man, I was assured, would be able to show me the errors of my thinking.

The sun was up and shining by the time Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim arrived, looking a bit sick from his early morning bus ride but otherwise ready to jump into the fray. The students then asked me to explain my case to the good mullah. I did so, once again laying out the sequence of the eight or so stories that built the case for Jesus’ being God’s one true sacrifice for the sins of the world. Then, we waited for his response.

“Everything you have said is true, according to the Holy Qur’an,” Mullah Mahmoud said when I was done, much to everyone’s surprise, including mine.

“It is?” I said, somewhat confused.

“But… but Islam teaches that Jesus didn’t die on the cross!” Job protested.

“Wrong!” said Mullah Mahmoud. Then, he broke off into a nasal melodic chant:

“Dh qaala llaahu yaa ‘Iesaa innii mutawaffeeka wa raafi’uka ilayya wa mutahhiruka minal ladheena kafaruu, wa jaa’ilul ladheenat taba’ooka fawqal ladheena kafaruu ilaa yawmil qiyaamah; thumma ilayya marji’ukum fa ahkumu baynakum feemaa kuntum feehi takhtalifuun!”

It’s always bothered me when local Muslims quote the Qur’an in Arabic during religious conversations. I understand why they do it, since Islam teaches that Qur’anic translations into local languages don’t actually count as the word of Allah (they call them commentaries instead). But since so few locals actually know classical Arabic, this often just seems a tactic designed to shut down any objections from the plebes who don’t speak the alleged ‘language of paradise.’

As usual, the rest of us just sat there while the Mullah did his recitation, waiting for him to get to the point and explain things in a language the rest of us could understand.

Enjoying a dramatic pause, Mullah Mahmoud, at last, went on to explain. He had just quoted Surat Ali ‘Imran 3:55.

In English, it can be translated as, “Remember when Allah said, “O Jesus! I will take you and raise you up to Myself. I will deliver you from those who disbelieve, and elevate your followers above the disbelievers until the Day of Judgment. Then to Me you will all return, and I will settle all your disputes.”

However, the mullah contended, there is a translation issue in the Arabic word mutawaffeeka. In Qur’anic Arabic, he contended, it means, “I will cause you to die.” Not “I will take you.”

“Jesus the Messiah died on the cross!” the mullah proclaimed triumphantly.

This is what left the rest of us stunned and quite unsure of what to say next. The poor, sleep-deprived university students looked somewhat gutted. They had argued all night long, brought in the backup they had thought would deal the final blow against the Christian message, only to have the mullah agreeing with the Christian!”

“Of course,” he added, clearing his throat, “that doesn’t mean he’s the Son of God or anything. Just that he did die on the cross and then ascended to paradise. There’s always been a stream of sound Muslim scholars who have believed this way.”

Job was clearly surprised and perplexed at what his friend had done. Robert looked like he had discovered a traitor in the ranks, and a leader at that. I, for my part, got the good mullah’s phone number. If he really believed that Jesus died on the cross, then we needed to be friends.

This was the beginning of one of the oddest friendships I would have during that first year on the field as a single. Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim was tall and lanky young mullah, with large ears, a pointy chin, and wide, energetic eyes. He had a broad toothy smile that contrasted with his short dark beard. He, like his father before him (hence the two Mullahs in his full name), was in charge of the small mosque in a village so small it was named Matches, i.e. as small as a matchbox. When Mullah Mahmoud sat down cross-legged on the floor, his process of folding up his long pointy limbs resembled the migratory storks native to his area that built huge nests on top of the electricity towers, birds the local language has colorfully named the ‘leggy pilgrims.’

But Mullah Mahmoud was an odd bird in other ways as well. I soon learned that he loved to craft flowery lines of over-the-top poetic affection – and to quote them to me in our conversations.

“You are my brother! And your mother is my aunt! And you are in the garden of my heart! And I will put a chair in that garden and you will sit there! And there will be flowers! And little butterflies will fly around you! Ahahaha-ha!”

Now, our people group are known for their highly verbal culture of respect. They say all kinds of things to one another in daily interactions that seem odd or over-the-top to Westerners. But Mullah Mahmoud was taking things to another level of weird (though thankfully, still platonic as far as I could tell). I’ll often try to respond back to my Central Asian with a few appropriate phrases like “You are a respectable one,” or “You are my big brother,” etc. But when Mullah Mahmoud would go on one of his flowery monologues I would often find myself pretty much unable to respond at all,

“Um… thanks? So then…”

This never seemed to deter him, however, so over time, I came to dread the long flowery calls from Mullah Mahmoud more and more. But I kept the friendship going, one, to be polite, but two, because Mullah Mahmoud was genuinely open to serious Bible study.

I don’t think he’d ever known a true Christian before, so when he would visit he was fascinated to sit down with me and my teammates and to pore over the Bible together. First, we got him a Bible in his native language. Then he asked for one in English as well, and then later one in Arabic. We were more than happy to oblige.

During one visit, we pulled an all-nighter of our own, staying up until the dawn answering question after question by taking him to various passages of scripture.

“This message of the good news is so beautiful, so amazing. That God become a man like this to save us from our sins…” I remember him saying this as we sat at the kitchen table, sipping tea in the early morning sunlight.

For several months, Mullah Mahmoud seemed like he might be getting close to genuine faith. He was careful not to show this when we were having discussions together with other Muslims, such as when we visited Job and his relatives together, who lived just a couple villages down the road from the mullah. Instead, he would even publicly attack Christianity and the Bible. This initially surprised me, but I learned that in an honor-shame context it’s not uncommon for someone who is genuinely open to only reveal that in private, while in public they maintain a robustly pro-Islam appearance. For a mullah with public religious responsibilities, this was even more understandable.

However, a day came when the questions began to shift, moving away from questions of substance toward pointing out alleged contradictions in the Biblical text like the number of Solomon’s chariot stables. This seemed to be evidence that Mullah Mahmoud had started listening to Islamic apologists like Zakr Naik, figures that excel in taking Bible verses out of context and in keeping Muslims fixated on tangential things and distracted from considering the more important questions at stake.

Before I went back to the US, I visited Mullah Mahmoud and stayed with him for a couple nights at his home in Matches village. On this visit, I remember pressing him hard when we were alone on the fact that he had gone back to maintaining that the Bible had been changed. I insisted that if he truly believed this, then he was admitting he held that men were stronger than God, that some group of Jews or Christians somewhere could somehow altar the eternal word of God which God has promised multiple times to protect forever. His response was to claim that the ‘true Bible’ had actually been preserved by God, but must have hidden in a mosque in Yemen or somewhere like that.

In the face of silly arguments like that, it was clear to me that the window of genuine openness had closed. I was sad that this odd friend of mine would, after months of serious study, settle for the status quo instead of eternal life. Yes, had he followed Jesus his life would have been completely upended, perhaps even forfeit. His wife would probably have left him. The villagers of his area would at least run him out if not try to kill him, such would be the threat they’d feel from an Islamic leader that becomes a Christian. It’s likely that Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim had counted the cost, and found it to be simply too high.

But as far as I know, he never went back on his earlier belief that Jesus had indeed died on the cross. And he never got rid of his Bibles in three different languages. This means that the Word of God is sitting there in little Matches village, like a spiritual time bomb waiting to go off, either in Mullah Mahmoud’s heart or in someone else’s.

It’s never worked out to reconnect with him. Part of me is not sure I can bear enduring the awful poetic phone calls were we to get back in touch. And part of me is not sure of revisiting a high-intensity relationship where so much sowing seemed to demonstrate, in the end, shallow soil. There are so many others who have not yet the chance to hear the good news.

So, for now, I’ve put Mullah Mahmoud Mullah Salim in the category of “If God wants us back in touch, he’ll providentially cause our paths to cross.” Over the years I’ve found this to be a helpful category to have for complicated past relationships where good investment didn’t necessarily lead to good fruit.

But I will never forget the bomb that Mullah Mahmoud dropped that morning in that university dorm room. An Islamic mullah who actually believed that Jesus really did die on the cross. What an unexpected thing to find in the wild. And what a good reminder that sometimes the most unlikely of people might, in fact, be those closest to the kingdom.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

*Names have been changed for security

Photo from Unsplash

Lessons Learned in Wartime

We’ve never been this close to a war before. We’ve had near brushes with terrorism, yes, and we’ve been through our fair share of unpredictable geopolitical crises. But thirteen consecutive days of missiles and drones being (mostly) intercepted and exploding in the skies around our city? This is a qualitatively new experience. 

We are learning some interesting things. Here are a few of them: 

The sound of certain incoming or intercepted missiles is just like that of a normal low-flying plane being suddenly interrupted by a distant firework. 

Other weapons, such as ballistic missiles or C-RAM air defense systems, sound a lot scarier. 

The smell of missiles and drones intercepted nearby is just like that of fireworks or cheap firecrackers. 

The line between wide-eyed curiosity and genuine fear is a fine one, crossed at different places for different individuals, and often unpredictable even for oneself. 

X (formerly Twitter) is a powerful resource for both real-time security updates (I’m talking even seconds after an explosion is heard) as well as lots of misleading photoshopped or AI images. 

Having contacts with access to detailed intelligence and analysis is far more helpful than relying on official government communication. 

Knowing the local language and having lots of local friends is priceless when it comes to risk assessment and situational awareness. 

Iranians, God bless them, when backed into a corner, will not respond the way Westerners expect them to. One of my best friends back in the West is an Iranian, so I have seen this on an interpersonal level, and am now seeing it play out on the international level. Exhibit A: None of us would have ever expected our friends in Dubai to receive so many more attacks than we have here. 

Humor is important for processing times like this. We may or may not have used AI to insert Godzilla into one fake photoshopped image that claimed to show our city going up in flames, then sent it to a certain subset of friends that we knew would appreciate it. 

It’s good to have an internal room without windows set up with mattresses and 72 hours of water and food, just in case. 

It’s also important to make sure that if the boys play with Legos in said safe room, they clean them up. During an attack in the predawn darkness the other day, I heard my wife call out, “Gah! The only thing worse than a drone attack is stepping on Legos during a drone attack!” 

It’s far too easy to get lost in doom-scrolling for hours during crises like these, and to lose sight of important daily disciplines. It is stunning how the brain can turn to mush and motivation utterly evaporate when wars and rumors of wars take over our social media feeds.

Community, especially Christian community, is utterly essential. Wise precautions sometimes need to be taken, but nothing comforts and encourages the heart in wartime like gathering with other believers to sit under the word, pray, laugh, and lament together. Isolation leads to trauma. Face-to-face community leads to courage and resilience. 

1st Peter is a great book to preach during times like this. This is what the local language church just started preaching through at the beginning of the war, having planned beforehand to do so – something that was very obviously God’s timing. Last week, we started hearing the ‘fireworks’ in the distance while the pastor was preaching an overview of the book and expounding chapter 4 verse 8, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.” After half a dozen muted explosions, the congregation was getting nervous. Wisely, the pastor paused to acknowledge what was happening and to pray. Then, he got back to the sermon. The congregation calmed down, then leaned into the remarkably applicable texts we were hearing. For our context, this was a good way to respond. Civilian infrastructure has not yet been targeted in our city, so we were just as safe sitting in the church gathering as anywhere else we could have gone. And if some stray crashing drone had somehow found us there, then what better way to go? After the sermon, we took communion and sang together. I, for one, was deeply thankful that we had chosen to gather.

Last lesson for now: There is an interesting place that is neither feeling compelled to stay nor compelled to go, but simply feeling free – free to stay and serve until something big changes or the war comes to an end. That’s where we currently find ourselves. We hope to steward this season and freedom well, as long or as short as it may be. 

May God grant peace and a swift and just end to this war. And may its end result in greater access for the gospel. Pray with us to that end. 

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Unsplash

In Missions, These Things Combined Mean Someone is Getting Played

Yesterday, I saw a claim made by an American pastor-missionary-trainer that he was heading to a nearby country to do some training with leaders from our region. Among other things, he said that one of the ‘streams’ this network of leaders represents has 100 churches in one of our sister unreached people groups. This is a group that shares the same ethnic name as our focus people group, but speaks a different related language. 

100 churches! Amazing, right? The Spirit must really be on the move in this part of the world!

Here’s the problem. The long-term workers on the ground who have actually learned the language to an advanced level only know of one church among that language group, and that a very unhealthy one. Some of our dear friends have labored for years in this unreached language and are finally on the cusp of planting a church – the first healthy church in that language group. And it’s not like some political border means we can’t easily go and verify either. The entirety of this language group’s homeland is right here in the country where we and these other missionaries live, only a short drive from where we live in Caravan City.

So, who’s right? The international trainer with the exciting claims or the missionaries on the ground who can speak the locals’ mother tongue and are neck-deep in direct discipleship relationships?

Sadly, this is not an uncommon occurrence in global missions. While it usually takes place in other regions of the world, with South Asia in particular being notorious for its wild claims of movements to Christ, every once in a while, I’ll hear of some organization making similar claims for our people group or those related to it. I cannot say much about South Asia or the fantastical claims made about what is happening there. But when it comes to our corner of Central Asia, I can testify that these claims are almost always smoke and mirrors.

“I’m immediately skeptical of whoever this is.”

This was my response when I heard this week about this leader and his trainings and his claims of 100 churches among our sister people group. This is because the different factors in this sort of claim combine to make a particular sort of smell, the smell of someone taking advantage of the people of God. The odor of someone doing the kind of work that soon disappears into the wind like so much chaff, while they then move on to some other work with an even better ROI.

Here’s a formula of sorts that tends to hold up pretty well here in Central Asia, and likely across the broader missions world:

A foreigner, more often than not non-residential, who doesn’t learn the language

+ short-term translated “trainings,” often in third countries or online

+ reports of amazing numbers of disciples and churches planted

+ ministry done solely and indirectly through paid local partners

+ claims that simple New Testament methods are being rediscovered and used

+ assurances that “God is moving in an unprecedented way among ______ !”

+ lots of appeals for money

_______________________

= someone is getting played

There are variations of the above formula, of course, but the fact that someone is getting played tends to stay constant across the board when you have a combination of the above ingredients. And by someone, I primarily mean generous believers back in the West who give to the trainer’s organization because they genuinely care about the advance of the gospel. These believers back in the homeland are deceived both into giving and into thinking that God is working in ways he is not actually working. Both are terrible ways to deceive people. But I would argue the second is probably more evil than the first. Tricking people out of their money is bad, of course, but relatively mainstream as far as sin goes. But Jesus said some terrifying things about those who attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Beelzebul (Matthew 12:31-32). What might that mean about those who deceive others into thinking something is a work of the Spirit when it’s actually a work of Mammon? 

Not only that, but the effect on believers on either side of the world when they find they’ve been duped is awful. I have seen this effect firsthand among locals. For those who were unfortunate enough to first be exposed to Christianity in one of these evangelical missions money hustles, if they’re not successfully seduced into the hustle, there is a terrible moment when they realize that the leaders in this Jesus thing are just like those in Islam – hypocrites out for selfish gain. The light seems to fade from their face, and their whole demeanor sinks back into a guarded skepticism. After this, they are often unwilling to gather with believers again for years to come, if ever. Again, Jesus says terrifying things about those who cause little ones, such as new believers, to stumble (Luke 17:2). Some who are lauded as inspirational missionaries in this world will be wearing millstones in the next. 

If you look again at the above formula, you’ll notice that each of the parts on its own, except for the end result, is not necessarily bad. In fact, each part can be done faithfully. For example, there are some countries where missionaries can’t get visas. It’s not always necessary or possible for someone to learn the local language in order to do solid training. Genuine movements of God have happened in church history, such as the first Great Awakening or the Korean Pentecost. Sometimes ministry needs to be done primarily through local partners, and sometimes those local partners should be paid. There are times to return to simpler NT methods when good extra-biblical traditions have become too cumbersome. And appeals for money are good when made by faithful workers, as even Paul himself modeled. Yet there’s something about combining all of these ingredients together in our current era of evangelical missions that tends to be evidence that something poisonous is taking place. Bleach is a good household tool. So is vinegar. Put them together, and you get a deadly chlorine gas. 

There are three ways I’ve observed in which the foreign-trainer figure is complicit or not in the overall deception. First, there are situations where the foreign leader is himself fully deceived by the local partners, though the foreigner is a faithful Christian trying to do good work. I once knew of a solid Reformed pastor who would visit our region every year in order to partner with a local leader up in the mountains. Sadly, I would later learn this local brother he was partnering with was a textbook wolf. Like all wolves in sheep’s clothing, he was very good at deception, so he managed to secure lots of funding and visits from this faithful pastor through things like strategic photos, compelling stories, and crowded house church services full of mobilized ‘believers’ that would suddenly appear whenever this pastor happened to be in town. But this local man was the same one who was making sure that all of the residential missionaries got reported to the secret police and run out of town. This faithful pastor unfortunately died before we had the chance to expose how he was being deceived. 

For non-residential leaders who want to avoid this first kind of situation, the best thing to do is to befriend trustworthy long-term missionaries or local pastors on the ground who can help you vet potential partners. These need to be missionaries or pastors who know the language and who can verify, in-person whenever possible, that your local partners are really who they say they are. For those living on the field, the best course of action to avoid this is to go ahead and learn the language and culture yourself, or to make sure that some on your team do. It’s shocking how much can be missed when partnership is happening through translation. 

The second category is when the foreigner-trainer is aware that the reality of things is not exactly the same as what is being presented when they send out their newsletters. But because they feel that so much good is being done through this ministry or movement, or because they just don’t want conflict, they choose to turn a blind eye to the billows of black smoke filling the sky that seem to suggest that there is a fire somewhere around here. Those who choose this path are guilty of deceiving themselves, of people-pleasing, of foolishness, and maybe even of cowardice. Rather than continuing to listen to the voice of naivete or fear, leaders or trainers in this category need to get clarity on what is really happening in the ministry they are partnering with. Again, those in this category have no better allies than those long-termers on the ground. Then, they need to take courage, repent of their part, confront those doing the deception, and make a clean break. Yes, even if that means they are the Western guy telling the indigenous pastors that they are in sin. 

The third category belongs to the actual hustlers. These are the missionary-trainer types who are fully complicit in the deception. They have learned how to tell stories, share stats, and manipulate well-meaning believers so that the money flows for the projects themselves, for their local partners, for their own dopamine hits, and for their own pockets. I hate that this is actually happening on the mission field, but it is. It’s happening even in our own corner of Central Asia. These hustler types tend to be great communicators, amazing fundraisers, skillful project managers – and wickedly good at all kinds of gaslighting and deception. Their amazing level of travel, projects, and output shields them from criticism. As does the radical-seeming nature of their work, usually being connected to some country or region that is known as militantly anti-Christian. Who wants to question the work of someone who claims to be facilitating church-planting movements in regions that have been devastated by ISIS, for example? 

Those in this category are playing a very dangerous game. At best, if they are believers, then they risk making it into the kingdom by the skin of their teeth, while all their work is exposed as chaff and burned up (1 Cor 3:13-15). At worst, they are false believers whose entire lives and ministries are built around using the Great Commission for the sake of personal gain. Based on God’s wrath against those like Simon the sorcerer, Ananias and Sapphira, and Judas, I’m confident there is a special part of hell for people like this. 

No particular kind of methodology is fully immune to these sorts of predatory missionaries. But some methodologies are, by their very philosophy and structure, much more compatible with deception. I’ve not often come out in my writing directly against DMM (disciple making movements) and movement methodology practitioners. I know that there are some out there who are careful believers who are trying to use these methodologies in ways that are faithful to scripture. I respect these workers’ motives, even as I disagree with them about their work. But after a couple of decades now, the evidence is mounting that the results of these methodologies are often highly questionable and concerning. At the very least, a DMM-type approach provides the perfect cover for someone who wants deceive God’s people for the sake of financial gain, whether that be a local who is deceiving his foreign partner, or locals and foreigners who are in on it together. 

Every part of the above formula for someone getting played is compatible with the way DMM is often carried out on the field. Missionary ‘facilitators’ or ‘trainers’ are encouraged to be non-residential, or to not invest costly years in direct language and culture learning, but instead to increase their ROI by leaning fully on locals, who are, as is often pointed out, much cheaper to fund. Instead of long decades of direct evangelism, discipleship, and modeling by example, DMM tends to advocate short trainings where the trainees are then responsible to go out and implement what they’ve learned without any direct involvement of the missionary. DMM practitioners make all kinds of claims about astounding numbers of disciples made and churches planted, often in the parts of the world that are most resistant to the gospel. And these claims go hand in hand with claims of recovering New Testament methodology where ‘everyone is a disciple maker’ and where there are ‘no experts,’ emphases that tend to gut any real spiritual authority for the good guys, while creating all kinds of space for little tyrants to take over. 

And then there’s money. Perhaps DMM practitioners in other parts of the world don’t do it this way. But here in our corner of Central Asia, DMM and lots of money changing hands absolutely go together. Of course they do. Amazing reports of gospel breakthrough in hard places inspire God’s people to give generously. And money, at least temporarily, is a wonderful lubricant to make sure a large network of locals falls in line with your particular silver-bullet methods. 

Tangentially, many DMM emphases, such as its ‘no experts’ approach and dislike of formal organization and preaching, are terrible contextualization for our Central Asian culture. This means that locals will, temporarily, do what they need to in order to secure their monthly funding – or at least take enough pictures and videos to make it appear so. But once the money dries up, the locals don’t continue with their ‘disciple making.’ After all, these methods have been cooked up among Western missiologists who are stuck in their own post-institutional, egalitarian, results-driven cultural moment. Even if we don’t talk about their biblical merits or lack thereof, these approaches don’t make any sense to our Central Asian neighbors. Once the money is gone, one of my favorite old adages comes out again, 

“Welcome to Central Asia, where all the methodologies come to die.” 

Friends, watch out for the above formula. It is often the case that these ingredients together are a recipe for deception in missions, or at least for poor work that won’t stand the test of time. The advocates of this sort of work often sound so good. But just like grandma said, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is. And as is the case when I heard about these 100 churches in our area (that don’t exist), when these ingredients are combined, someone is getting played. 

Note: I followed up and did some research on the leader making these claims. Sadly, all indications are that he’s a category 3 hustler type. “Borderline criminal” is how one faithful long-time worker among that people group put it. Lord, have mercy. May God grow his church here and protect the local believers as well as those back in the West from those who would use them for selfish gain.

If you have been helped or encouraged by the content on this blog, would you consider supporting this writing and our family while we serve in Central Asia? You can give here through the blog or contact me to find out how to give through our organization. 

One of the international churches in our region is looking for an associate pastor and our kids’ TCK school is also in need of teachers for the 2026-2027 schoolyear. If you have a good lead, shoot me a note here.

Blogs are not set up well for finding older posts, so I’ve added an alphabetized index of all the story and essay posts I’ve written so far. You can peruse that here

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

Photo from Unsplash