This week I came across an old note from the end of our first term recording lessons we had learned and were learning when it came to church planting among our Central Asian people group. It’s been six years since I wrote this note, but these takeaways hold up pretty well. For context, see where I’ve written elsewhere about lessons learned from a wolf attack and why it took 7.5 years to raise up our first local elder.
1. Leaders MUST present a united front when dealing with a divisive man, guard against him dividing them.
2. Some believers feel entitled to rent money if meeting is in their house and church salaries. We need to address this upfront.
3. Dig much much deeper before committing to a believer with a really bad reputation.
4. Speak openly about how giving money is and is not used, reinforce regularly that we do not believe in Jesus in order to get money.
5. Be much slower with traditional locals to brainstorm about starting businesses, etc., due to patron/client entitlement issues.
6. Local believers will go to their leaders first when they see a problem with another believer rather than address it directly. This is what they know to do. How to navigate this?
7. Men are tested both by how they use money and what they do when they are not given money. Same thing with power.
8. Meeting in someone’s house gives them a certain measure of power. It is then very hard to discipline them because of that power.
9. Believers bitter about money can very easily twist the truth about our financial situation as missionaries and use it effectively to destroy trust.
10. We should look for trustworthy locals who can interpret indirect communication that is happening around us.
11. Locals will gather semi-publicly if they see a vibrant body of believers, will invite others.
12. Locals will grow in a simple meeting with worship, prayer, and biblical teaching – even if led by foreigners.
13. Some local believers are too quick to do the sinner’s prayer and pronounce someone a believer.
14. House church meetings could use a clear, visible, executive leader to call the shots publicly, but we should guard against the cultural strong man inclinations.
15. We may be somehow able to ask for proof to back up believers stories about persecution, theft, etc. But not yet clear how.
16. It is very tricky to navigate more than two cultures at a time. Multicultural teams have their pluses as well as their minuses.
17. Beware of the Facebook Christian industrial complex that can be predatory. We are not working in a vacuum. Prep believers for when they are approached by outsiders with promises of money, cooperation, or traditions that we have not introduced.
18. Watch out for believers who are super judgmental of small things and other believers. They might be in hidden sin.
19. Mutual clarity on next steps every single week is crucial to avoid misunderstandings as a team.
20. The level of duplicity practiced by some locals is far beyond what we have experienced elsewhere. Pray for supernatural discernment.
21. Locals are not passive regarding leadership. Some will seize it if they see an opportunity. Firm biblical plural leadership is needed, without giving up the temporary apostolic leadership model.
22. Locals tend to idolize then demonize their leaders.
23. Locals in meetings are helped by a clear program and clear boundaries. They are drawn to structure, plans, organization, and institution while we are heading in the opposite direction because of our own Western culture. Our orientations toward institutions are very different. We are skeptical while they are enamored. Seeing a certain amount of organization and program may be part of the threshold which makes locals feel free to gather with others.
24. Our joy must not be rooted in our friends’ performance or in the status of the work!
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This local proverb focuses on the connection between how we use our tongues and our experience (or lack thereof) of a mind at peace. Essentially, look at someone who runs their mouth, gossips, and lies, and you will find a person whose mind (and life) knows very little peace. But chances are very good that someone who knows how to control their tongue is also someone who knows some measure of rest and inner calm. This is just as true of the Central Asian bazaar as it is of Twitter and Facebook feuds.
The wisdom literature of the Bible has much to say in this regard. Consider Psalm 34,
[11] Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. [12] What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? [13] Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. [14] Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.
If you desire life, to see good, to have a mind and heart at peace, then the use of your tongue (including your keyboard) needs to be top priority.
What local oral tradition does not say is how someone can find the power necessary to actually tame the tongue, something that James 3:8 says is humanly impossible. As is so often the case, traditional wisdom knows the goal, but not the means. Believers, however, know this is only possible through the use of another’s tongue, another’s all-powerful saving word. When he has “brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures,” (James 1:18) then – and only then – will be have tongues truly tamed and minds truly relaxed.
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When you live in an area of high desert, wise cultivators of the land learn how to slow the water down. Our corner of Central Asia gets just as much rain as London, but it’s concentrated in two main periods of rainfall, our equivalent of the early rains and the late rains mentioned in the Old Testament. This means that most of the abundant rainwater is lost in runoff and not available during the long periods of dryness.
The more parched and eroded the land is – often due to poor management or abandonment – the worse it gets at retaining the water. But when humans (or beavers in other climes) simply slow the water down with things like small dams, a local ecosystem is transformed. More water remains in the ground, meaning plants stay green longer into the dry summer. Plants grow and develop deeper roots, and thus retain more of the nutrient-rich soil. This in turn leads to even more plant growth, which attracts animals. Quite literally, the desert blooms. If you go on YouTube and search for permaculture projects in Arizona, the Sahel, or the Middle East, you can see some amazing examples of this.
We saw our own example in the traditional courtyard of our previous house in Central Asia. We had a well on the property, so we were able to begin regular watering of the fruit trees and bushes that lined the courtyard walls. We slowly planted more and more herbs and small trees in this border area and eventually planted grass in the center yard areas as well. In spite of the intense heat, the plants flourished now that they had regular access to water and weeding. Olives, pomegranates, figs, loquats, grape vines, rosemary, lavender, roses, tequila plants, and lavender all grew happily. And the animal life followed. By the end, our courtyard was home to scurrying geckos, croaking toads, chirping crickets, scampering mice, and cooing pigeons. Our house was surrounded by cement city, but our courtyard was a little green oasis. In its old stone walls, it had dirt, water, and humans who sought to cultivate the land. So it came to life.
Those living in Central Asia and the Middle East have long known the importance of using water effectively. Persians built underground water tunnels to their cities and royal gardens, patches of cultivated green where our word for paradise finds its origins. Assyrian emperors like Sennacherib built aqueducts to bring the waters of the mountains to Nineveh to water his palace gardens (likely the true location of the famed hanging gardens of “Babylon”). For centuries, careful systems of irrigation kept the fertile crescent, well, fertile. When particularly brutal conquerors came through and slaughtered local populations, as the Mongols did, the land itself “died” a little more as these careful water management systems broke down. Modern wars, agriculture, and mismanagement have made these regions some of the most water-endangered places on the planet.
But the water is still there, in the rain and in the mountain streams. So, much of the land could be resurrected if the government and the locals simply prioritized wise ways to slow the water down. To this day, I don’t understand why the rainwater collection tanks which were standard for my childhood homes in Melanesia are not used in our part of Central Asia. Or, why policies like those of Bermuda roofs are not adopted to mandate roof construction so that more of the precious rain can be collected? Wells we have aplenty, but they are systematically exhausting the groundwater reservoirs. And we have some large dams, mainly for hydroelectricity, but very few of the smaller rock dams or other permaculture practices are used that can make one valley sustainably green, while the next valley over is parched and brown.
Among the countless good works that missionaries in our region could do to commend the gospel message, there is much room for Christians who know how to make the desert bloom. Our locals love their land and delight in their little patches of greenery in a way I’ve seldom seen in the West, so this could be the kind of platform work that locals highly value – and one that buys considerable space for controversial gospel work. Despite my description of our previous courtyard, I am not a natural green thumb or farmer. For me not to kill it, it needs to be simple and hardy. Hence the rosemary and tequila plants. But I know there are many skilled farmer-types out there, some who perhaps have never thought about how a love for the soil and a love for the nations can come together.
However, I recently learned that slowing the water down is not the wise thing to do in every context. In some regions, to care for the land you need to speed the water up. I learned this while visiting some friends who are church planters in Eastern Kentucky, where they have too much water. There, to have land that you can cultivate, you need to get yourself some very effective drainage. Otherwise, the ground is simply waterlogged clay. Rather than dams, they need ditches, and lots of them. In Eastern Kentucky, wisdom calls for speeding up the water.
In all of this, I am reminded of the different emphases of different seasons and places of ministry. I have written long and often about the need to slow down when it comes to missions and church planting in Central Asia. Spiritually speaking, it is a desert. To resurrect the church in these regions we need to take the time to learn the language and culture, to invest years on end in discipleship and character development in order to see qualified leaders raised up. In the harsh summer sun of Islam and persecution, rapid church planting and movement methodology have led to churches that quickly bloom and just as quickly wither like the grass on the traditional mud rooftops. Instead, we need churches that are like olive and oak trees. Yes, they are slow-growing. But they are hardy – and they can last and steadily multiply for a thousand years.
But this does not mean that there is never a time and a place for speed in missions and church planting. Any student of church history will know that there really are seasons of remarkable spiritual awakening. Even in my own parent’s story, I hear an echo of this. They were missionaries in Melanesia and were supposed to be church planters. But they never planted any churches because the churches were planting themselves. Instead, they invested in eight different churches over a short period, providing interim leadership until a local pastor could be found. Relatively speaking, they moved fast. They still sought to disciple believers faithfully, but the pace of ministry there was simply running at a faster rate than we have seen in Central Asia.
That being said, one key mistake of contemporary missions is the assumption that we can reverse engineer movements of the Spirit and replicate them anywhere on the mission field. It’s Finney all over again, “Revival is a work of man” and all that. But the other ditch is to live as if revival or awakening might never break out in our ministry context. The steady wisdom of most ministry contexts says to slow the water down. But wisdom also says that this might not always be the case. What if you find yourself in a metaphorical Eastern Kentucky?
Just because man-made revivalism is out there doesn’t mean that we should discount the possibility of genuine revival – or a genuine movement. When the Spirit is truly moving, when it’s a time of spiritual deluge, we should have a category for moving faster than we would otherwise be comfortable with. I imagine the disciples were a little uncomfortable with what they were required to do when they had 3,000 or 5,000 a day becoming believers during and just after Pentecost. “Jesus spent three and half slow years with us, are we really ready to vouch for this pilgrim from Cyrene who only just heard the good news of the kingdom for the first time this week?”
Yet another time to move fast is when it’s clear that a given person or church is already saturated with the truth. When this is the case, it’s no longer time to sit and soak. Instead, it’s time to get up and start pouring out. For some of our Western churches that are awash in rich resources and mature disciples, the need of the hour is to start asking questions like, “What would it take for us to send a church planter out every year?”
We need to rightly discern the context and the season of ministry in which we find ourselves. Much of the world is the spiritual equivalent of desert. We need to figure out how to slow the water down. But other places and seasons may call for an unusual burst of speed, for helping the water to move even more quickly. The key here is to not presume that we can somehow produce this latter season, yet always to keep faith alive that we could see a season or two like this if we continue in faithfulness.
As for me and the literal land, don’t be surprised if you find me someday building some small rock dams across the stream of a desert valley. Even for those of us who are not wired to be gardeners, there’s something ancient that lingers from that old great-grandpa Adam. Deep down in our bones, we are made to make the desert bloom.
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This local proverb speaks about necessary mess. Valuable work brings certain costs and messes with it. This saying refers to someone who wants the reward of catching a fish, but without the unpleasant wetness that tends to come along with it. “Getting your hands dirty,” and “You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs” are close English equivalents to this idea. Or, simply, “No pain, no gain.”
This proverb would be used when someone is excited about a certain outcome but then balks at the cost required to achieve it. We’ve all seen it. Someone is totally with us as we cast vision and talk about the amazing potential of a certain work. But then we talk about what it actually takes to get there, how long it’s going to take – and we’ve lost them.
Proverbs like this are important for reminding us about the nature of reality. We are prone to illusions that we can easily gain wealth, influence, or ministry success without much hard work. But we live in a post-fall world. By and large, good fruit only comes through painful toil and sweat equity, by getting our feet wet. This applies to fruit in both the natural and spiritual realms. Starting a business is very hard. So is planting a church. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.
Solomon also speaks of necessary mess – and how it can be evidence of good work being done. “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox” (Prov 14:4). The logic is clear. If you want abundant crops, you need oxen. And oxen make messes.
Clean mangers and silver bullet ministry methods may sound great. But the kind of fruit that counts is costly – and yes, often very messy too.
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This proverb comes from Virgil’s Aeneid, referring to that infamous Trojan horse incident. I’m sure this proverb was true enough once, at least back in the day when Greeks were a dominant power in the Mediterranean world. Even now, when a military power leads with a gift, it’s wise to think twice before receiving it. You never know how that gift (or development loan) might be turned against your people – or at least what strings may be attached. This is just as true of today’s global powers as it was 2,500 years ago.
When it comes to missions, it could also be said, “Beware of missionaries wielding proverbs.” This is because, as we’ve come to see, local proverbs can be a great way to smuggle biblical truth past the defensive walls that might exist in the local pagan worldview. The difference is the intent of the incursion. The Greeks snuck in to conquer. We sneak in to serve.
As we’ve been sharing in front of different groups about heading back to Central Asia, I’ve repeatedly told the story of how finding a local proverb on trust greatly helped our team overseas. You see, the local believers in our corner of Central Asia have major trust issues. “We don’t trust any locals we didn’t grow up with” is the typical position. Local believers will hold firm on this, even when it comes to interacting with others who profess Christ. Often an introduction of one local believer to another will later be followed by each separately approaching us, quietly warning us not to trust the person we just introduced them to because they are likely a “bad” person. This dynamic makes church planting and even small group Bible study formation next to impossible, unless it’s made up of people who grew up together.
In these areas, the worldview of our people group is very rigid and binary. People are either good or bad, trustworthy or not. If you grew up with them or somehow otherwise know in great detail that they come from a “good” and trustworthy extended family, you can trust them. Otherwise, you can never trust them. Trustworthiness is something you either have or don’t have. It’s not understood as something that can be granted or lost in degrees or something that can be incrementally built. At least this is how most locals think and behave in their day-to-day lives.
However, this is where a local proverb has proved so incredibly helpful. “Travel and business are a gold appraisal tool.” Paraphrased, this means “Through travel and business a person’s character is revealed.” In this proverb, we see the ancestral wisdom of our people saying you can come to trust someone by going on a long trip with them or by going into business with them. When we started using this proverb in response to a local believer insisting he’d never trust another local believer, the conversations noticeably changed.
Before, it was like we hit a wall, a locked gate. But when we used this proverb by way of appeal, it was like we were somehow smuggled in behind the defenses – and were then able to turn the conversation to how the Bible speaks of trustworthiness. As the local believer then scratched their chin and admitted, “We do say that, don’t we?” we could tell them that the Bible’s questions for ‘trustworthy or not’ sound like, “Does someone confess the gospel? Does their life exhibit the fruit of the Spirit? Are they a member of a healthy church?” In this way, this local proverb became our Trojan Horse by which we smuggled in biblical categories that were otherwise being rejected out of hand. Today, a local church exists of believers who did not grow up together – yet who have come to trust one another (at least the core members, anyway).
This miracle is, of course, a work of the Spirit. And yet the Spirit uses means. And one of the surprising means that he used was a proverb that our local friends knew and believed, but which they were mostly forgetting about in favor of a more prominent idea. We had somehow stumbled on a place of inconsistency in the local culture where one area of inherited wisdom contradicted another area of inherited wisdom. When in response to “Don’t trust anyone you didn’t grow up with,” we countered with “Travel and business builds trust,” this seemed to produce a worldview short-circuit of sorts. These crossed wires created just enough space to shift the conversation into the creation of new, biblical categories.
It doesn’t always work, of course. Cultural beliefs and habits go deep, even if you’ve got some punchy proverbs on your side. But for me, this story illustrates the potential of this kind of work. We’ve not really ever laid out an organized biblical theology of trust and trustworthiness for local believers. We’ve only made very initial attempts to do this, somehow gaining far more ground from this lone proverb and brief references to Scripture than we ever thought we could. Imagine what might result if we were to lay out for local believers, on the one hand, a detailed picture of what their culture believes about trust; and then on the other hand, the big picture of what the Bible has to say. Then after comparing and contrasting, thanking God for the overlap and lamenting the deficiencies, we break it all down into new, biblically-faithful proverbs that they can carry with them and use in their daily lives.
All of this reminds me of Paul in Acts 17 and Titus 1. In both places, he uses the pagan poet Epimenides of Crete to illustrate and create space for his difficult biblical message. The line “For we are indeed his offspring” is used to prepare Paul’s Athenian audience for his point that God is not an idol, but a living being who demands repentance. And “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons” is used to strengthen Titus’ hand in shutting down all the insubordinate, empty, and deceitful talk going on among the churches in Crete. Some Areopagites would be helped to hear Paul because he appealed to a poet they respected from a nearby nation. And hopefully, some Cretans might likewise hear Paul/Titus referencing the same man, their native poet, and stop being such blockheads.
Even Jesus appeals to local oral tradition when it agrees with and supports his teaching. “For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” (John 4:37-38)
The takeaway from all of this is that there will often be some local wisdom that is on our side – sayings or proverbs or poets that can function as Trojan horses for gospel servants who hope to get in behind the defenses and gain a hearing for biblical truth. We have found proverbs like “travel and business” to be immensely helpful in gaining a hearing for biblical truth. Perhaps even deeper and more thorough work in these directions could yield even more encouraging fruit.
Beware missionaries wielding proverbs? Well, if you are a servant of the enemy, then yes. Whether proverbs, poets, or otherwise, it seems that God has planted Trojan horses like these that can get through even the thickest of walls.
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This is a very helpful piece from the Great Commission Council on how sending churches and missionaries can better support single missionaries.
Why an article about caring for the single missionary? After all, saints in the church are defined not by marital status, but by their identity as immortal image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:27) and sinners redeemed by Christ for his glory. Since their primary identity is not in being single, why must churches and sending agencies pay particular attention to the needs of single missionaries as a demographic?
Singles represent approximately one-third of missionaries on the field; of these, the majority are women. This means that approximately a quarter of all missionaries are single women. Since God continues to give single missionaries to the church, supporting these workers well is essential to the flourishing of our brothers and sisters and the Church’s mission.
Every missionary and field context is different, but the experience of overseas service has implications in the lives of single missionaries which differ from those who are married. These implications are less visible, so leaders in their local church and mission agency must give careful attention to them, ask good questions, and listen well. Leaders do well to understand the unique experience of single missionaries because doing so serves the church in significant ways.
Read the whole article here and learn about the unique realities singles face on the field, the hindrances to their care, and what it can look like when it’s done well.
I’ve written in the past about some of the reasons why I love having singles on our missionary teams. The church – and the church planting team – is simply stronger and more gifted when Aquilas and Priscillas are working alongside Timothys and Silases.
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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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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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For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
“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 utterlyfree 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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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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For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.
Entrusted to the Dirt 
