What About Students Interested in Missions?

As we’ve been visiting different partner churches, we’ve met a number of high school or college students who feel that God may be calling them to serve on the mission field. Many of them have asked our advice about what they should be doing to further discern and to prepare for this kind of ministry. We’ve loved the zeal that we’ve encountered in these students, but as the book of Proverbs says, “desire without knowledge is not good” (Prov 19:2). So, here is some practical advice to accompany the good desires that many students have to serve Jesus on the mission field.

First, tell your pastors and ask them to mentor and guide you. In our individualistic culture, it’s often our default to wrestle with a missions calling on our own and then to begin shopping for various missions organizations and programs – all without ever talking to our spiritual shepherds about it. But any genuine missions calling should be one that is affirmed by your local church and its leaders. The healthiest way to wrestle with desires for mission and to prepare for service is to do so in regular conversation with your pastors, and ideally, while fulfilling whatever kind of requirements they have developed for future missionaries. This kind of a track might be more or less formal depending on the size and culture of your church – and your request might be what causes them to develop one – but good pastors should be able to put aspiring missionaries on some kind of pathway that includes work on the character, knowledge, affections, and skills that qualified missionaries need to possess. Let your pastors know your desires for future missions service as soon as possible, even as early as your membership interview. And if you’re not yet a member of a healthy church, then join one ASAP.

Second, focus on growing in godly character. Be steady and faithful in the regular spiritual disciplines that make for a growing disciple who may one day become a leader. Be regularly in the word and prayer, giving generously, attending and serving your church faithfully, fighting sin, and obeying Jesus wherever you can. The character of a missionary is the foundation of everything else. And character grows slowly, like an oak tree, so be willing to wait as long as necessary for your mentors and pastors to affirm that it is indeed present – even if this leads to a timeline much longer than you were hoping for.

Along with character, pursue the knowledge you will need as a missionary. You need to know your Bible inside and out, so dig deep into the study of the Bible and theology in whatever avenues are available to you – books, classes, podcasts, sermons, blogs, eat it up wherever you can get it. You need to know with second-nature clarity what the gospel is, what a true believer is, and what a healthy church is. Knowledge of the Bible is far more important than knowledge of missions. That being said, knowledge of missions is an important second. To gain knowledge that will serve you as a missionary, read missionary biographies, listen to missions podcasts, pick the brains of visiting missionaries, and read books, articles, and blogs about issues in missions and about the various peoples of the world. You never know when knowledge of certain events in missions history or a basic understanding of a missions controversy or cultural differences might be the key that unlocks wisdom in a given situation – so soak up as much as you can. Knowledge can grow quickly, so watch out that pride doesn’t also grow with it as your knowledge will often outpace your character.

One often overlooked aspect of missions preparation is the need to foster the right affections. This starts with a passion for God’s glory, his word, and his church, but it extends into a passion for the lost peoples and places of the world. Notice how Paul in Romans 15 has a holy ambition to preach Christ where he hasn’t yet been named. Affection is one of the trickier aspects to focus on. How do you grow the affections, the emotions? Well, the Bible says that your heart will follow your money. So, give your hard-earned student job money to missions. Jesus says that if you do this, your heart will follow. In addition to this, make a plan to fast and pray regularly for the nations and for missionaries, on your own and also with others. Then practically, make friends with lost people from other cultures and language groups. As you invest time in relationships with lost friends who are refugees, immigrants, students, or migrant workers, your believing heart will be stirred to see them come to faith. So, friendships with internationals are another key to fostering the affections needed for a future missionary.

Relationships with those from other language and culture groups are also key to developing the skills you will need as an aspiring missionary. Just like any skill, it takes many hours of practice to learn the subtle art of noticing, learning, adopting, and then leveraging differences in language and culture. You will be forced to do a good measure of how to do this overseas, but do yourself a huge favor by developing cross-cultural friendships now and beginning the long and slow process of training your mind and body to navigate the maze of how different kinds of humans equate form with meaning. How do you find these relationships? A few practical suggestions would be to choose to become a patron of businesses run by internationals – groceries, barbers, cafes, restaurants. Also consider ways you can volunteer as an English tutor in your community, something constantly in demand. And consider how you might be able to host internationals for meals and hangout times. Simple genuine hospitality can bless lonely internationals and lead to strong friendships.

In addition to cross-cultural skill, you will also need ministry skill. Learn to share the gospel, to study, to teach, to preach, to disciple, to risk, to strategize, and to fail with courage and trust in the sovereignty of God. Learn how to navigate conflict with other believers and the what and why of your typical responses to conflict. Learn also to endure suffering patiently, and what your particular responses to suffering are and where they come from. Know your weaknesses and learn to appreciate and celebrate the different giftings of other believers. Much of this practical knowledge can only come through opening ourselves up to wise counselors who can help us see things about ourselves that we can’t otherwise see. And speaking of seeing, it’s going to be very hard for you to reproduce something you have never seen, so if you want to be part of planting healthy churches overseas, then you need some experience of being in a healthy church where you are now. Likewise, if you want to plant churches, then consider being part of church planting where you are currently located.

You also need to work a real world job before becoming a missionary, whether that’s full-time or part-time or ministry work in your home country. This is important for several reasons. One, effective missionaries have to work hard at their task. This is no career for those who want to take it easy. It’s helpful to have real-world work experience as a standard by which to compare how hard you are pushing in the less concrete world of missionary work. Two, effective missionaries will have seasons where they need to know how to submit and follow the lead of others. This is much easier if you’ve already had a boss or two and have some experience doing what you’re told. Three, working marketplace jobs can keep missionaries from getting entitled when it comes to their financial support. When you remember and can still feel how hard it is to make a day’s wage, you are going to be more humble and grateful when you are supported by the money earned by other Christians. For current students (who are part of Gen Z), we are seeing that this willingness and experience in working hard is something that is very important. Work-life balance is important, but so is a willingness to sacrifice when needed.

Finally, consider serving overseas in a mid-term capacity before you go career. Mid-term is a category between short-term and long-term, somewhere around three months to two years long. The benefit of serving mid-term is that you are on the ground long enough to outlast the honeymoon phase and hopefully also the “I hate everything here” phase that often follows. You need to experience the grounding that comes from being able to be honest about a place, a people, and a culture. There will be good things, there will be evil things, and there will be things that are fun or that simply annoy you. When you have come back down to earth and can see things more clearly like this you are in a much better place to gauge whether or not God has indeed wired and called you to be a missionary. Plus you also will have the perspective of other missionaries and local believers to lean on. I love mid-term missionaries because they make some of the best long-term missionaries, but they also make some of the best senders and supporters. If God calls them to stay in their home country after their term of service ends, then they will have been overseas long enough for that experience to color their work and ministry for the rest of their lives. If I had it my way, every pastor would serve as a mid-term missionary before they plug into long-term service in a local church.

So, if you are a student who feels like the Spirit is stirring your heart toward missions, pay attention to those desires. And consider how you can accompany desire with the things mentioned here – character, knowledge, affections, skill, local church membership, real world work, and mid-term service. You don’t have to wait around to see if your desires will pan out or not someday. You can actively work to test them and to invest in a possible future missionary ministry wherever you currently are.

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A Proverb on the Power of Spouses

Treat your wife poorly, she’ll turn into vinegar.

Treat your wife well, she’ll turn into wine.
Regional Oral Tradition

This proverb from a neighboring people group speaks of the power that spouses have to shape one another, for good or ill. While this saying focuses specifically on husbands, its wisdom could apply to both husbands and wives as a very straightforward marital application of you reap what you sow. Yes, spouses are always responsible for responding in godly ways, even if they receive poor treatment from their partner. But this truth does not mean we should ignore the amazing power husbands and wives have in making those responses to behavior easier or harder. A cruel husband or wife can absolutely turn their spouse into a sour, bitter, vinegary person. Every culture can attest to this.

Like the biblical proverbs, this cultural saying is a principle, not a promise. There are always exceptions out there, like Hosea, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule. In general, men who treat their wives well will, over time, see them blossom and flourish. Psalm 128 richly describes this kind of marriage, also using a wine-related simile:

Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways!… Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house;
Psalm 128:1,3

When someone gives their spouse steady, unconditional affection, this is an amazing force to be reckoned with. Believers have a massive advantage here because we not only know what it is to be shown this kind of unconditional affection, but we’ve also been indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to miraculously live like this with others. He helps us to love our enemies, and even our spouses – including on those days when they seem like our enemies.

Vinegar or wine – our marriages are fermenting into one or the other. This is a helpful image to keep in mind as we seek to love our spouses well.

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Underneath a Resistance to Pray

“When I was a young man and still a Muslim, they used to force me to memorize the prayers. And they made me regularly lead the mosque prayer time. I hated it.”

Samir* shuddered as he told us this, clearly not enjoying the sensations this memory brought with it.

Samir grew up as an Indian Muslim in East Africa, his family part of the large Indian diaspora there. Now, he’s a new member of our small group here in Kentucky. A few weeks ago, the men in the group were sharing our testimonies with one another when Samir confessed his struggle to pray publicly.

“To this day, I don’t really like to pray in public… I appreciate you guys’ helping me to grow in this.”

It was a humble and genuine confession, the sort of thing that many more mature Christians might hold back. The fact that Samir had shared this made me instantly trust him more.

“Brother, it’s not just you,” Reza* chimed in. “Maybe it’s a former Muslim thing. I have a similar struggle. Is that why I saw you praying off a notecard a few weeks ago?”

Reza was referring to a prayer meeting for one of our group leaders who ended up in the ICU after a terrible bike accident. Samir had contributed a two-sentence prayer to this time that I had found actually quite encouraging, mainly because of its unusual brevity and simplicity.

“Ha, yes,” Samir responded with a shrug. “Even that was really hard for me, but that’s what I could do.”

“It was great, brother,” Reza said. “And I’ve never thought about it before now, but that’s probably why public prayer is so hard for me as well.”

Reza shook his head, his gaze distant in self-reflection. The tentacles of Islam can take a lifetime to find and shake off.

Yet here were two believing men from a Muslim background openly recognizing what was underneath their resistance to praying in front of others. For both of them, it came down to past suffering, seasons of religious control and manipulation, and the resulting scars on their hearts – scars which they still struggled with, even though Christian prayer is so radically different from the Islamic Salat.

This knowledge means that both of these believers are now better equipped to respond to this resistance to obedience. It means they can now take a more targeted approach to the problem, applying biblical truth more like a sniper rifle, and less like a shotgun. And those others of us present are now also better equipped to encourage them – “Brother, you are utterly free to pray or not pray in public. God welcomes your words as a kind father, delighting to hear from you. And the Spirit gently helps all of us to pray when we don’t know how.”

This is the power of digging into our personal stories when it comes to growth in sanctification and obedience. I imagine these are the kinds of insights that make a counselor’s day.

Encouraged by my brothers, I also shared that night about some recently discovered roots of my own reluctance in prayer. For me, it’s not so much a resistance to pray in public, but a resistance to pray in crisis. I have long noticed in me an instinct toward anger when asked to pray when some crisis situation has suddenly emerged. It’s only recently that I think I’ve been helped to recognize where that comes from.

The morning my dad died my brothers and I were moved away from the porch and windows, where we would have seen my dad fighting for his life in the yard. A missionary aunt herded us into the living room and led us in prayer – prayers that God said no to. In the decades since, It seems that I have ingested a narrative that goes something like, “Don’t pray in the midst of a crisis moment. It doesn’t do anything. Do what you can in the moment. Pray later, when God is actually paying attention again.”

Instead of a reluctance to pray that comes from experiencing spiritual manipulation, mine is more tied to a deep spiritual disappointment – the idea that God doesn’t really listen when things are at their worst. To do what I don’t want to do, to turn to prayer when I’m in a desperate situation, I will need to apply biblical truth that addresses that particular area of unbelief. I will need truth and passages that speak of God’s nearness to his children in crisis.

That same week I encountered a similar thought from my daughter. I had asked my kids at bedtime what was stopping them from praying on their own. My daughter shared that every time she puts on a new insulin pump, she prays that God will not allow it to hurt. But every time it still hurts. This sense of being ignored by God and praying ineffectual prayers keeps her from risking prayer to God at other times.

I was so glad that she shared this with me because then we were able to speak about the nature of God’s promises when it comes to prayer. And as with Samir, Reza, and myself, this means I now know what is going on underneath the surface. With this insight, I can better care for her heart, even as I challenge her to be courageous and to keep on praying.

This cluster of conversations about resistance to prayer reminds me of the vital importance of believers acting as “soul doctors” for one another. We must help one another to see what so often we cannot see ourselves, as a counselor did for me, as Samir did for Reza, as I hope to do for my daughter.

Whenever there is internal resistance to follow Jesus in a given area, this comes from somewhere specific. Yes, it broadly comes from a sinful nature, the presence of the sinful flesh, the effects of the world and Satan. But within these broader categories, there are very specific roots in our stories – roots which, when exposed, can make all the difference.

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*Names changed for security

What Missionaries Fear About House Church and Big Church

Floor mosaic from Byzantine church in Capernaum, built on top of a 1st century house that may have been Simon Peter’s

Last week I wrote on some fundamental struggles inherent in the house church and “big” church models; namely, house churches struggle to organize naturally and big churches struggle to multiply naturally. Today, I want to address two common fears present when Christians or missionaries move from one model to the other, either from house church to big church (i.e. churches that meet in other dedicated facilities), or from big church to house church. My hope is that awareness of these fears and concerns will lead to greater freedom among missionaries or other believers who might need to shift models for good reasons.

For our context in Central Asia, both models of church are truly helpful and needed. We were surprised by this, having assumed that the house church model would be the only one possible and strategic. But we eventually learned that for many in the cities, and especially those with any kind of government salary, they were far more willing to meet in more traditional big church settings than in homes. This has been the majority of the believers we’ve been personally in relationship with during our time on the field. Believers from the villages, however, or those with more conservative relatives, have proved far more willing to meet in security-conscious house church gatherings.

The posture that led to freedom was realizing that we could plant healthy New Testament churches in either model. It was not an either/or. We and our colleagues could faithfully plant a more open big church in the city or plant a semi-open house church in the village, depending on the ministry context God placed us in. These models were helpful with the particular fears of locals regarding persecution. Those more at risk of government persecution were helped to meet in a more “respectable and sanctioned” setting. Those more at risk of family persecution were helped to meet in a more private setting. For any readers concerned that this sounds like pragmatism, I would contend that this is instead simply a way to apply Jesus’ command to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” in a context where local believers are like sheep among the wolves (Matt 10:16). Different contexts will bring their own reasons, but I continue to contend that both house church and big church models are helpful and needed just about everywhere.*

What are the fears that missionaries struggle with when switching from a big church to a house church, or from a house church to a big church? Here, I’ve seen two primary concerns emerge in my own heart and in the hearts of others as we’ve had to go back and forth over the years. When moving from a big church to a house church, we fear that house churches are not spiritually safe. And when moving from house church to a big church, aside from concerns about reproducibility, we fear that big churches are not spiritually authentic.

When moving from a big church model to a house church model, many doubt if the house church approach is spiritually safe. Here’s what I mean by that. Believers might doubt that the house church model can adequately protect against heresy. How can adequate pastoral oversight exist in a group which seems so small and informal? Or they might doubt that such intimate gatherings can happen without being hijacked by immature or deviant people who are present. There may also be fears that without the same kinds of institutional structures there is no guarantee of longevity – the house church could simply dissolve and disappear over night. Or, that house churches are particularly prone to domineering-leader rule.

These fears are not illogical, but rather quite natural for someone who has come from a big church background. Such a believer is used to the structures and size culture of a bigger church providing a measure of safety against these possibilities. More pastors and more centralization can indeed mean better protection against false teaching. The way big churches tend to run their services, and even the size of the congregation, makes it harder for an individual to hijack the meeting. Big church formal organization and even buildings are aids to longevity. Bigger congregations can indeed balance pastoral power. But if we are honest, none of these things have protected countless big churches from heresy, hijacking, dissolution, or dictatorial leaders. The benefits of a certain size culture are helpful aids, but they are not the main thing that protects a church from these dangers.

Yes, all of the above dangers can indeed befall a house church – and I’ve seen all four – but that doesn’t mean they are inevitable. If the planters, leaders, and members of a house church are committed to becoming a healthy New Testament church, then they can fend off these dangers just as effectively as any big church can. It starts with the commitment to obey the Scriptures in everything commanded regarding the structures and life of a local church – even in those areas that feel less natural given the small size of the group, like intentional and organized leadership, membership, giving, discipline, etc. From that core conviction, faithful leaders and members then combat heresy, rebuke divisive people, hold their pastors accountable, and continue to gather as a church for the long-term – just like any other church would.

Remember that all of the churches in the New Testament that we know of were house churches. The majority of churches in the first three centuries continued to be house churches. And in many contexts of persecution and mission throughout history (even in the West) have seen periods of faithful house churches and house church networks. There is good precedent for faithfulness in this model, and for the potential for house churches to be spiritually safe. It’s not about the model, it’s about the faith and obedience of the believers within it.

However, the missionary who goes the other direction, who moves from steeping in house church Christianity to attending a big church, will be faced with a very different fear – that big church is not spiritually authentic. I remember wrestling with a lot of cynicism when attending big churches after a year and a half in house church contexts. How was I to know that the worship team (with their smooth, planned transitions) was truly worshipping and not just putting on a show? There seemed to be so much room in a group that size to fake it, to wear masks, and to just go through the motions. How could I know what the other believers were really going through when the group was not ten, but two hundred strong? The majority of the room was just passively receiving, and not actively using their spiritual gifts. These were things that were much less likely given the size culture of the house churches I had been attending.

These fears make a lot of sense when you consider the perspective of someone coming from a house church background. But once again, honesty compels us to say that there are plenty of house churches that also struggle with believers faking it, hiding what’s really going on, and sitting passively instead of using their gifts to build up the body. Their smaller size has not made them immune to these dangers, even though it makes it somewhat easier to combat them. Again, it’s not the model, it’s the faith and obedience of the believers within it.

In a big church where the planters, leaders, and members are committed to being a New Testament church, they will labor to build structures and a culture that promotes spiritual authenticity, transparency, and as many members using their gifts as possible – even when these things feel less natural for a church of their size. This is why so many big churches are committed to having things like small groups, ministries focused on particular demographics within the church, and discipleship classes. They are seeking to create house-church-like structures within the broader body that can account for those things that can’t take place in the large corporate gathering.

We should remember that very early on, Christians, many of whom were raised in the synagogue model, renovated homes into larger dedicated worship spaces. One very early example of this is in Capernaum and may have been the very house where Simon Peter once lived. Certainly, for the past 1,700 years, when believers have had the chance to worship publicly and become a big church, most have chosen to do so. The sheer number of believers in the Jerusalem church and their temple porch gatherings (Acts 5:12-14) show us that larger worship gatherings do not automatically cancel out spiritual authenticity – or at least the apostles didn’t believe so.

God is the God of both small and big churches. There can be a beautiful redeemed simplicity to a healthy, organized house church, just as there can be a beautiful redeemed complexity to a healthy, multiplying big church. Both can be spiritually safe, both can be spiritually authentic. We need to be aware of our own fears and making sure that we are not relying merely on the strengths of certain size cultures, even those strengths are are present and helpful. Instead, we need to rely on the power of God’s word to build his church, whether we meet in a house or in a building with a steeple.

Rather than a posture of skepticism or fear, we need to embrace a posture of humility and service. If you feel the big church service is lacking authenticity, then model it yourself so that others might also enter into it. If you feel the house church is lacking in spiritual safety, then get to work putting the things in place that will better guard the church. Remember, it’s not ultimately about the model, it’s about the faith and obedience of the believers within it.

*Even in the West, consider the advantages the house church model could provide for those less able to benefit from larger services – those struggling with substance abuse, the disabled, those with sensory issues, etc.

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Photo from Wikimedia Commons

House Churches Won’t Organize, Big Churches Won’t Multiply

When it comes to the contentious issue of whether to plant house churches or “big” churches, we’ve long advocated for both. True, our particular corner of Central Asia needs both because of its own issues – half our locals are afraid of family persecution and feel they can’t risk getting caught in a public church service, the other half are afraid of government persecution and feel they can’t risk getting caught in an illegal house meeting. But though these particular issues might be unique to our region, I would advocate that most contexts around the world would be helped to have both kinds of churches operating in a complementary relationship. There are tremendous strengths as well as weaknesses to house churches. The same goes for “big” churches, churches that meet in their own facility or another third space.

To account for these accompanying weaknesses, wise intentionality is needed so that churches can mature and become truly healthy. This intentionality will look a little different for each, due to the particular size cultures of these two main types of churches. In short, house churches will need intentional organizing and big churches will need intentional multiplying. Left to themselves, most house churches will naturally multiply, but will not naturally organize. And most big churches will naturally organize, but not naturally multiply.

Here it may be helpful to refer to a tool we’ve used in our ministry in the past, the 12 characteristics of a healthy church, broken down into three typical stages.

This diagram is simply a visual summary of what the Bible teaches about the local church’s necessary components. It also demonstrates the typical three-stage order in which these components tend to develop – and the two places of common roadblocks. Many house churches do not progress from stage one (Formative church) to stage two (Organized church). Many big churches do not progress from stage two to stage three (Sending church). When you consider what is most natural given their different size cultures, these roadblocks make a lot of sense.

House churches don’t have difficulty feeling the need to multiply. It becomes painfully clear to most present when a house group has grown too large for its space. There’s no more room to sit, the hallways are clogged, there’s no place for members to park their cars, the children are overrunning the meetings, the neighbors are complaining. House churches do have difficulty, however, in organizing. The small size of their group means that those present don’t often feel the need for intentional systems of giving, leadership, covenant membership, and accountability and discipline. The sense is that if these things are necessary, then they can happen organically, by group consensus.

This is why house churches need wise leadership that calls them to organize. By failing to intentionally organize, house churches miss out on the spiritual power that comes from biblical church order as well as leave themselves vulnerable to attack. Each of the characteristics in the organized church stage can sometimes happen organically. But wise organization means they will happen – and in a thought-out biblical way. When the church faithfully applies scripture to its own structure, when it does what the church is meant to do, spiritual power follows.

On the other hand, house churches that don’t organize are leaving themselves vulnerable to strongman, domineering leadership. If the church is not intentional about things like plural leadership, membership, giving, and discipline, the most likely outcome is that one man will fill that vacuum. He will be the sole leader. He will control the money. Membership and discipline will be simply whoever is in his good graces or not.

In addition to these points, organizing well means better relationships with any big churches that are in the area, who are often suspicious of house churches and their aversion to organize in ways that signal trustworthiness. This is very true in Central Asia and the Middle East, but it’s a dynamic present in the West as well.

Big churches, on the other hand, need wise leaders who will call them to multiply. Organizing happens more readily because big churches have met the size threshold where members and leaders naturally sense the need for better systems and structures. One hairy members meeting is all that is required for this revelation to occur. But because of the size culture of big churches, the most natural thing to do is not to multiply, but to simply keep growing. Without the physical stimulus provided by an overly-packed house, big churches will not naturally feel the need and the goodness of multiplying. Instead, as the church grows, the needs grow, and the felt sense that more people are needed to fill important roles.

Even in big churches that do believe the importance of multiplying through church planting, many will not know how to do this. So, intentional efforts will need to be made to teach and model what it looks like to raise up qualified leaders and send them out. When this happens well, the church will know the costly joy of sending away their best. Counterintuitively, this “loss,” this self-giving of multiplying makes a church healthier, as well as more obedient to the great commission. On the other hand, when church multiplication is not done, the church risks growing inward and stagnating.

It’s important to realize that house churches can organize just as faithfully as big churches. Big church advocates tend to doubt this. And big churches can multiply just as faithfully as house churches. House church advocates, in turn, doubt this. The actual organization and multiplication can and should look different, reflecting the different needs and abilities of these different models. But the principles underneath these forms should be the same. The key conviction here is that the local church can be fully expressed in both models. It’s not about the model, it’s about the intentionality of the leadership and members to pursue a biblical ecclesiology.

On the ground, many house churches won’t organize and many big churches won’t multiply. We need to be those able to help them do so, and thereby help them step into the fulness of the Bible’s vision for the local church.

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Eleven Expressions of Gastronomic Humility

“Can you guess the secret ingredient in this white sauce?” my wife asked our kids as we finished eating our dinner of rice pasta.

Different kids guessed various foods that mom had snuck into dishes in the past.

“Nope. Out of guesses? It was cauliflower. Orange cauliflower.”

My daughter, who had been enjoying her pasta, immediately pushed her plate away from her, noodles unfinished. “Blech!”

“Hey, now,” I said, “you were enjoying it until you knew what was in it. Do you see the power your mind can have over your tastebuds? Your tastebuds liked it, but because you’ve decided in your mind that cauliflower is gross, you stopped being able to enjoy it.”

“It’s important that we regularly try new forms of food that we don’t like,” I continued, switching into teachable moment mode. “You might be surprised at how much you can enjoy food in one form even when you don’t like it in another. I really don’t like green peas or celery. But I really enjoy green pea soup (especially with bacon in it) and cream of celery soup.”

“Mom, do you think you could hide food that we don’t like in our dinners once a week? So that we could trick our brains into liking it?” said one of our sons, playing the compliant child and overcompensating for his sister.

My wife shook her head and wisely refused to commit to some kind weekly system for this. My daughter, to her credit, started finishing her pasta.

Keeping up with our kids’ ever-shifting food preferences, on top of their health issues, has been a difficult dynamic of this season. We talk a lot about food at this stage of our family life. This is partially because we have lived cross-culturally and have had the privilege of enjoying foods from many different cultures – an experience that may explain why we have one child who wants to grow up to be a chef.

But we also talk about food a lot because we have a lot of food issues spread across our family, including type-1 diabetes, gluten intolerance, dairy intolerance, stomachs that can’t eat after 7:30 pm without throwing up later in bed, and stomachs that can only handle a very limited amount of oily or rich food without triggering Montezuma’s revenge. Finally, we end up talking about food a lot because we are somewhat of a foodie family. We really like food, sometimes too much so. Hot drinks, sweets, crunchy chips, or fancy restaurant food can all too easily become a place our family retreats to for comfort or refuge.

“I think it comes down to humility,” I said to my wife later that night, as we processed the dinner cauliflower conversation. “Just like we want to enter a discussion open to there being some aspect of truth or wisdom that we might be missing, we also want to partially doubt ourselves when it comes to foods that we think we don’t enjoy. It may be that we try something again and something has changed. Or that there’s a new way to eat it, or some new way to pair it, that transforms a food from gross to delicious. We want to stay open to that. In this way, there can be a kind of posture of humility when it comes to food.”

“Could you call that gastronomic humility?” she asked.

“I guess we could,” I laughed, “Gastrumility? Gastro-humility?”

The more we talked and the more I’ve since thought about it, there really is an important link between humility and a wise posture toward food as Christians. What follows are eleven expressions of this kind of gastronomic humility. I’m sure this list is not exhaustive, but these are principles and practices that have been helpful for our family as we wrestle with faithful living and parenting in this area.

We confess that our food is a good gift provided by God and others. We are not entitled to our food. Rather, it is generously given to us by a kind God who is careful to feed his sparrows as well as children. This kind provision is mediated. Many have labored to grow or raise the food, process it, sell it, and prepare it. This should make us thankful and joyful when it comes time to eat, and those who continue to pause to give thanks before we eat. (Matt 6:11, 6:26, Acts 27:35)
We try new foods and new forms of foods we don’t like. When we make a practice of trying new foods, we admit that our preferences are not final nor fixed, but fickle things that can flex and change with time and experience. There is real wisdom in the saying, “Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.” An openness to new foods and new forms of foods correlates to a more joyful life, since the spectrum of God’s good creation that we can enjoy is larger. (Gen 1:31, 1 Cor 10:26)
We eat within the boundaries given to our particular bodies. We acknowledge the health limitations that God has allowed for our particular bodies as a result of the fall. As we find these boundaries (often the hard way), we embrace humility by honoring them, even though we grieve that this is not the way things were supposed to be. In this way, we are good stewards of the imperfect bodies we have been given. We also learn to recognize the areas where we are free to partake and others are not, and instead of grumbling, give thanks for them. (Gen 1:29, 1 Tim 5:23, Phil 2:14-15)
We confess that food is inherently good, even if our own bodies react negatively to it. The fact that my body rejects rich melted cheese does not mean that rich melted cheese is inherently bad or unclean. Rather, God has created every food to be good when it is enjoyed in the proper amounts and ways. I may find that even within these boundaries, the brokenness of my body means I am not free to enjoy it. But this does not then make the food itself bad. I will not let myself call something bad or unclean that God calls good, but seek to accurately name the brokenness in my own body (and sometimes in the ways a good food has been processed destructively). (Gen 1:31, Acts 10:15)
We feast and we fast. Following the commands and examples of the Scriptures, we see that God is honored both by his people sometimes feasting, and sometimes fasting. Both can be holy, both can be beneficial, both should be present in the life of a believer (Matt 6:16, John 2:1-11).
We do not judge those who do not eat certain foods, neither do we unduly admire them. The Bible is clear that some Christians will abstain from certain foods because of their conscience, and that it’s wrong of those who partake to then disdain them. This would also apply to those who abstain from certain foods because of strong opinions about health. We should guard against feeling superior to them. On the other hand, this abstention should not mean that we put them on a pedestal or treat them as if they are living on some higher plane of the Christian life (Rom 14:13-23).
We do not boast or find our identity in the foods we don’t like or can’t eat. Our dietary restrictions and preferences are not meant to be a central part of our identity or our conversation. They do not make us more special nor usually more interesting in conversation. They are the result of the fall and human limitation. While we should feel free to acknowledge and name them, they are cause for sober conversation and even lament, not celebration. If I don’t like green peas or can’t process rich melted cheese, that means I am missing out on good things that others are able to enjoy. The way I speak of these things should reflect this and the fact that food and drink is not central to the kingdom of God. (Rom 14:17)
We are careful with foods that tempt us toward gluttony or addiction. We should notice which foods tempt us to push past the boundaries of wise and healthy consumption, and which foods we want to turn to when we are sad, tired, or anxious. We will need to exercise caution with how we eat these foods and may need to consider abstaining entirely or for a season. (Prov 23:20, 1 Cor 6:12, Phil 3:19)
We use food as a way to love others. God has created food as a central part of human relationships. Jesus models this for us in how he intentionally ate food with sinners and tax collectors. Giving and receiving hospitality is an important way to love others and an important picture of the peace we have with God. Food is good in and of itself, but it’s also to be used to win the lost, help the needy, and bless the saints. (Mark 2:16, 1 Pet 4:9, 1 Cor 9:22)
We strive to glorify God and serve others by enjoying as great a variety of his foods as possible. God made a world full of countless combinations of foods, flavors, and spices. These are put here for our joy and for his glory. There’s also a huge variety of how different human individuals and cultures partake of these vast riches. With an intentional, flexible, omnivorous posture, we put ourselves in a better position to enjoy diverse foods with others and to give God glory for each and every flavor we encounter. (1 Cor 10:26, 1 Cor 9:22)
We look forward to the perfected foods and stomachs of the resurrection. Foods and stomachs are flawed in this age – good, yet broken in many ways. We use this knowledge to actively anticipate the world to come, where we will be given resurrected taste buds and stomachs and will be able to enjoy the full range of God’s good food and drink. In this way, each of our limitations now can be a means of strengthening our longing in the coming resurrection, where we will feast will Jesus. (1 Cor 15:35-53, Is 25:6-8)

Consider these eleven expressions of gastro-humility. Are there others that need to be added to this list? A proper posture toward food is such a difficult thing to find. And judging by the amount of New Testament passages dealing with food, it was difficult for the New Testament believers also. Thankfully, into this tricky discussion the Scriptures give us a ballast, a solid and clear compass we can come back to over and over again, even when we disagree with other believers about what to about food:

“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10:31)

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

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Photos are from Unsplash.com

A Proverb on Bygones

Don’t go after yesterday’s hat.
Local Oral Tradition

This local proverb is roughly the equivalent of “Let bygones be bygones” and perhaps “Don’t beat a dead horse.” Its main point is that it’s foolish to bring up problems from the past that have already been addressed. To do so is a great way to stir up trouble unnecessarily.

Why does the proverb use the imagery of going after a hat? On this front, I’m not completely sure. It may be referring to the impossibility of wearing the traditional headgear the exact same way as yesterday, since this involves a skull cap with a scarf wrapped into a turban around it. Or it may simply mean that if you lost your hat, it’s not worth investing much to find it. Just move on and get another one. I can say that wearing hats was until recently very important in local culture when it came to honor and respectability. And not just locally. When you look at photos from the first half of the 20th century, even in the West, almost everyone is wearing hats.

The disappearance of hats or turbans as an expected part of respectable daily clothing is something I’ve never heard discussed. But something clearly happened. For hundreds and hundreds of years almost everyone wears them everyday. Then somewhere in the mid 20th century, they stop. Maybe the increasing availability of indoor plumbing meant that hair was able to be made presentable much more easily, and therefore hats were no longer as necessary? In this theory, styled hair is the new hat. Or, perhaps the disappearance of hats is a reflection of the global workforce and even domestic life moving more and more indoors and out of the sun. It’s one of the great unsolved mysteries of history, and something that a time traveler from a hundred years ago would find most peculiar about our present time.

Anyway, back to the meaning of the proverb. Bringing up problems from the past that have already been covered or resolved is a kind of destruction. Solomon agrees, “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends” (Prov 17:9). This is the kind of foolishness or malice that is powerful enough to ruin even close friendships.

There is a great deal of wisdom required in knowing when to cover an offense, and when it’s necessary to explicitly address the sin and pursue clear apologies and forgiveness. But either way, after we have decided to cover it in love or have had the reconciliation conversation, then wisdom would have us to truly release it – and no longer go after yesterday’s hat.

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Photo by Wikimedia Commons.

Don’t Rule Out a Burning in the Bosom

My wife and I had the honor of serving at the recent Cross conference in Louisville, KY. As members of the Great Commission Council, we were there to interact with students who had questions about missions and to attempt to provide them with wise and experienced counsel. Overall, we loved the conference. Over three days, 11,000 students and leaders sat under preaching, breakouts, and panels that focused on local church-centered missions. If there are students in your church or ministry interested in missions, I’d highly recommend they attend Crosscon ’25. Sadly, many that we trust in missions circles have serious concerns about theological drift at Urbana, but Cross aims to be a student missions conference that loves missions, loves sound theology, and loves the local church.

One of the days featured a panel on Decisions and Calling. As with much of the content, this panel session was rich in wisdom and practical, biblical guidance for young people wrestling with whether or not God might be calling them to the mission field. The framework presented focused on discerning the will of God through pursuing what is clearly revealed in scripture for a holy life, recognizing what our personal opportunities are, and submitting to what our church thinks we should do. Sound counsel for an age of radical and subjective individualism.

As my wife and I debriefed afterward, there were only two things that we would would have added to this important discussion (These are things I believe the panelists would agree to as well, but you can only say so much in a given session). The first would have been mentioning that skill is also an important part of discerning if someone should be heading toward the mission field or not. While character is the foundation, and knowledge is essential, there are some abilities that really need to be present for a good potential missionary.

Not least among these is what has sometimes been called cultural intelligence. Practically, this is the ability to make deep friendships across cultural and linguistic lines. If someone wants to reach the nations for Jesus but all of their friends here in the West look just like them, something doesn’t quite line up. Since most in the West now live in areas with some level of access to cultural and linguistic diversity, it’s not unreasonable for churches to look for these kinds of friendships as one marker of whether or not God is calling someone into missions.

There are other skills as well, but here I’ll just mention that the vast majority of missionaries also need to be able to teach. This might seem blatantly obvious, but a surprising number of missionaries end up on the field with very little actual teaching experience in their local church. Please, make sure that your missionary can do a decent job teaching and/or preaching in his own language and culture before you send him to teach or preach in a foreign one. If you are sending missionaries as church planters, then evidence of this skill is absolutely essential (1 Tim 3:2). Don’t neglect to train women missionaries in this skill also since so many of the unreached peoples around the world are also highly gender-segregated.

In addition to this, I felt that the Decisions and Calling panel should have left more room for the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in giving holy ambitions on an individual level. The panel pushed back against what was too much of an emphasis on a “burning in the bosom” in generations past. But I think we should be careful that we don’t rule out a kind of specific passion personally received which compels someone to reach the nations for Christ. It is not the only way to have a “real” missionary calling. But biblical example and church history show that this kind of individual calling really happens sometimes.

Paul had a holy ambition to preach the gospel where Christ had not been named (Rom 15:20). Timothy had a gift (perhaps connected to evangelism) uniquely imparted to him by the laying on the hands, which he was to fan into flame (2 Tim 1:6-8, 4:5). St. Patrick experienced dreams that convinced him he was to return to Ireland as a missionary. Hudson Taylor and Adoniram Judson also experienced personal calls to missions soon after coming to faith.

Yes, there are some like Nik Ripken, author of The Insanity of God, who simply read the great commission and decide that they are supposed to be a missionary. That’s one side of the spectrum. Then there are people like me. As a freshman in college, I was hypothetically open to missions, but definitely not open to working among Muslims. Then I found myself sitting in a Baptist church presentation where a missionary played a video of a night baptism in the Middle East. As I watched, my heart burned and I heard these words clearly spoken to my soul, “Go to the [people group name], go to the Muslims.” And there are countless experiences in between.

Just like we see in the Scriptures, God rarely calls anyone into ministry in the same way. The burning bush wasn’t repeated for anyone else. Neither was the Damascus road experience. Jesus’ calling of Peter and Andrew was very different from Nathaniel’s. Sometimes people go into missions in a style more akin to the authorship of the book of Luke. They do a lot of careful research and build a very good case that they are called to be a missionary. Other times it’s more like the Apocalypse (Revelation) of John. No research there, but instead rapt attention paid to some very unexpected things that have been seen and heard. Will we really say that one is more spiritual or valid than the other? And what would be our biblical grounds for doing so?

The very understandable position in reformed circles is to dial down the talk of missionary callings and burnings in the bosom. But we need to be careful lest we rule out valid ways in which the living Spirit works, lest we get pulled into an experience of following God that is only cognitive and not also open to the way the Spirit mysteriously leads through our affections. We also must be careful of a posture where we hypothetically believe that God can clearly communicate specific callings to his people, but where we assume that will never actually happen in our circles. We must know our own tribe and place in history and these particular ditches we tend to fall into.

A personal calling to the mission field must always be submitted to the wise counsel of local church leadership and put through the filters of character, knowledge, skill, and opportunity. But along with that, we need to have a category for a spectrum of calling experiences. Like our personal testimonies, some will seem more natural, others will seem more dramatic. Both are supernatural.

Why did I experience a calling to the mission field that was more like a burning in the bosom? Who knows? Maybe it was because of weakness, and the Lord knowing that I in particular would need that crystal clarity when things got hard. Perhaps others are steadier than I am and so their holy ambition was clarified through simple circumstances or logic. It’s hard to say.

I love wisdom, the pursuit of it, and I love frameworks built upon it. I love missions that is infused with sound theology and rooted in healthy church emphases. But I do not want to rely so heavily on these things that I discount the possibility of the clear, personal, affective guidance of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. To do so would be to deny things I have seen and heard, yes, but more importantly, things that are in church history and in the word itself.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

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Photos are from Unsplash.com

A Proverb on Not Arguing with Your Spouse

Arguing with your wife is like spitting straight up into the air.
Regional Oral Tradition

This is a new proverb I’ve just learned, used among a sister people group. What’s true of making connections to remember new vocabulary is also true of learning proverbs – the more absurd, the easier to remember. This proverb uses a thoughtless and self-defeating action – spitting directly up into the air – to highlight the foolishness of much arguing within marriage.

When you spit straight up, it’s going to come back down, right onto your face. Likewise, when you dig in and keep pushing and prodding in order to win that argument with your spouse, you might be technically “winning.” But because of the nature of marriage, the relational oneness you share with your spouse, you are in fact doing harm, both to them and also to yourself. We have an English saying similar to this one, “like spitting into the wind,” that also communicates the futility and stupidity of a given action – although I’ve never heard it applied to marital conflict.

The Scriptures also present the importance of pursuing peace in the marriage relationship. “A continual dripping on a rainy day and a quarrelsome wife are alike” (Prov 27:15). “Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way…” (1 Pet 3:7). And, “He who loves his wife loves himself” (Eph 5:28). What does this practically look like? “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19).

So, heed the wisdom of generations of Central Asian nomads past, and more importantly, the wisdom of God’s word. Don’t spit directly up into the air, and don’t argue with your spouse. Your spouse (and your face) will thank you.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

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Photo from Canva.com

A Proverb on Walking a Fine Line

May the skewer not be burned, neither the kebab.
Local Oral Tradition

For the past six months I haven’t been able to blog as much. I’ve been committed full-time to some online education projects for our Central Asian people group, a season which is now coming to an end as we prepare to go back overseas. At some point I’ll write a post reflecting on this very unexpected online tentmaker-type experience that I dove into while we’ve been in the US on this long medical leave. But not now. For now, I just want to get back to writing more often. And what better way to do so than with a new Central Asian proverb? And a proverb about something delicious, no less – kebab!

But first, there is a lost-in-translation issue that needs to be cleared up. When most of the world speaks of kebab, they are speaking of ground beef or lamb hand-pressed around a long, flat metal blade of sorts, which is called a shish. The long rectangular raw meat, pressed around the blade-skewer is then placed on top of coals and roasted. This is a shish of kebab, which has come into English as shish kebab. But wait, isn’t a shish kebab chunks of meat and vegetable skewered on a long metal or wooden thing and grilled? Well, kind of. That’s still a shish because it contains a skewer, but the actual word for the chunks of meat would be another word, tikka in our region. So what we call shish kebab is actually a shish tikka (with chunks of chicken, beef, lamb, liver, fat, male animal reproductive organs, etc.)

Why is this important? Well, because when most English speakers visualize a kebab, they are visualizing something that is related, but is not actually a kebab as its original cultures would know it. Please see the above picture for what a kebab is in the regions from where it originates. And now compare that to what North Americans call a shish kebab, below.

Now, since I’m a not at all a language purist, I point this out in order to clear up any confusion, not to tut-tut about how we’ve ruined the word shish kebab or anything like that. No, the word shish kebab has come into English, has taken on a life of its own, and has been a happy part of family barbecues for decades now. May it be blessed.

And in case you were wondering, this kind of word borrowing and mutation happens all the time, in both directions. The English word blouse has been co-opted by our Central Asian language and now is used (in the form blus) for what Americans call a sweater and Brits call a jumper. This is simply the nature of words. It can get confusing, but at least it keeps us on our toes.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s get back to the actual proverb, “May the skewer not be burned, nor the kebab.” This proverb is equivalent to our English sayings, “To walk a tightrope” or “To walk a fine line.” Essentially, this proverb is used when there are two important things that need to be balanced or held in tension in a given situation. As I said above, Central Asian kebabs are cooked on a long metal blade-like skewer. This is important because the metal heating up helps to cook the kebab on the inside, while the outside is being cooked by the coals. So, being the good Central Asian chef that you are, you don’t want the outside to burn while the inside is still raw, and vice-versa. You need them to be cooking at the same rate, so you attempt to position your shish of kebab so that it’s just right.

There is wisdom is this proverb, the kind that recognizes that much of what is good and true must be held in balance and tension in order to not be distorted and become bad. Parents should listen to their children so that they feel heard and loved. But parents must not give their children authority such that they end up deciding things for the family. Christians should emphasize the sovereignty of God in all things, yet they must not stop sharing the gospel because of this truth. Solomon’s proverbs are full of the tensions inherent in the pursuit of wisdom. As we recently shared with our kids regarding restaurant food on vacation, “If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it” (Prov 25:16). We still had at least two nights of offspring vomiting up restaurant food late at night.

It’s been a very strange 14 months waiting for clarity and wisdom about the future, trying to make decisions that left the door open to both staying the US and returning overseas. I don’t know that I always got it right. There were some investments of time and treasure that may have resulted in some burned kebab.

However, I trust that the coming resurrection will account for all investments made out of a desire to be faithful, even the ones that prove to be a bit misguided when the fog clears. It’s good to be here, feeling like the path before us is somewhat visible again. And by the grace of God, that path will involve some good kebab again, and not just the proverbial kind.

To support our family as we head back to the field, click here.

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

Photos are from Unsplash.com