When I think about the types of verses that I’ve been encouraged to memorize throughout my life, they have tended to be verses that record the teaching or commands of Jesus or Peter or Paul. Perhaps that has been your experience as well, but what I have not spent a lot of time memorizing are the narrative stories of the gospels or the book of Acts; the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, the healing of blind Bartimaeus, the story of Paul’s time in Philipi or Thessalonica or Ephesus. One type of passage focuses on the teaching and commands while the latter is simply telling the story, narrating what certain people empowered by the Holy Spirit actually did.

This, I have come to learn, is the difference between those passages that are prescriptive and those that are descriptive. There is an important distinction here and I’m increasingly convinced that, as disciples of Jesus, we should sharpen our skills at noticing the descriptive passages to help us better understand how to live out and obey the prescriptive ones.

An example of a prescriptive passage is the great commission, “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). In this passage, Jesus is prescribing a way of living. He’s asking us to obey him and do the things he commands in this passage. It’s a clear call to make disciples - Jesus is telling us to do this thing. It is a prescriptive passage.

But, what does it mean to make disciples? And how do we go about baptizing them? And teaching new disciples to obey everything Jesus commanded - what does that mean and how do we do it? While His command is clear, when it comes to what we do on Monday morning to obey it, most in the church today have little idea. We tend to fall back on the one action we know to take - invite them to church. That is a good idea but, is that what Jesus meant when he told all disciples to make disciples? Invite them to church and hope that a thirty minute sermon will be adequate to invite them into a life of apprenticeship to Jesus? I think He might have had more in mind.

This is where the descriptive passages in scripture are helpful. In answering the questions above, the book of Acts gives us a front row seat to watch the first Christians make disciples. The twelve, the seventy two and many more had spent three years apprenticing to Jesus as he taught and ministered in front of them and with them and we can watch how they make disciples throughout the pages of Acts. They not only heard the great commission but they had also watched Jesus do it. Because of this I think we can assume that they had a fairly clear idea of what Jesus was expecting of them and so as we watch their lives, we’ll see real time examples of what Jesus meant when he gave the great commission. The description of their lives and actions fill in the blanks of our understanding.

Do descriptive passages hold the same weight as the prescriptive ones?  No. Prescriptive passages tell us truth about God and share the commands of Scripture. The Bible is clear that Jesus expects us to obey his commands. With descriptive passages however, we simply get a front row seat to watching the first disciples live out those truths and obey the commands in their particular time and context. It is important to understand that their time and context was different than ours.

Jesus healed in all kinds of interesting ways. In the gospels we can see examples of him healing others - with a word, with a touch or embrace, by spitting and making mud or sticking his fingers in a person’s ears. These are descriptive passages but I don’t think anyone would say that in order to heal a person we need to spit and make mud. If the Holy Spirit leads us to do such a thing, we sure should but while the Bible does call us to pray for healing, how we do that might not matter so much. There are many examples from the church in Acts that don’t make a lot of sense for Christians living in the modern world and many more that aren’t the only way to do a thing.
 
While the examples in scripture don’t hold the same weight as the clear teachings of scripture, it is vitally important that we regularly hold our methods and ideas up the mirror of scripture and think reflectively why we do one thing when the Apostles and first Chrsitians did things so differently.

As an example, Jesus’ command his disciples (that includes us) to baptize new believers. The example in the book of Acts is of immediate baptism. The longest time between conversion and baptism that I can find is the Apostle Paul who waited in blind darkness for three days before Ananias arrived. In my modern day church experiences, baptism is often put off for months and even years as we wait for the new believer to go through some sort of class so that we, the older more mature Christians, can make sure they are ready. Is it wrong to baptize in our way? I don’t think so but this is why the descriptive passages can be so helpful. They cause us to look at our traditions, the way we do things, and compare them to what those closest to Jesus did. And in this case, it causes me to question why we deviated from the pattern of the Apostles. Are we somehow smarter than Paul and Peter? Do we have some insight that they did not? The fruit of mature disciples seems more abundant in their time than it does in our modern western churches. Food for thought I guess.

Another example is how churches come into being in the book of Acts. I hesitate to use the word “planted” because I’m not sure we can find enough evidence that Paul’s goal was to plant churches and his methods are so apples to oranges different than our modern approach, that the phrase “church planting” ends up being a distraction. To be sure, Jesus intends the church - the gathered body of believers in any one location - to be his outpost in a broken world. He will build his church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. But as we follow Paul, in particular, through the second half of Acts, his method seems to be focused on making disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to obey the commands of Jesus and then, the church always emerges. But in another mind blowing observation, these churches are immediately led by the brand new believers in each city. Nobody plants churches like this in North America. We generally tend to transplant a group of mature believers with a sizable budget into a new location where the outsiders will lead for the foreseeable future. Is this wrong? Again, I don’t thinks so. It’s just another way to do it. But it is not the example of Paul which should cause us again to wrestle with our assumptions and beliefs about church planting. We often talk about Paul being the most prolific missionary and church planter in history so it is curious why we’ve so readily disregarded his example?

So while the descriptive passages help us understand and apply the prescriptive ones, they also have a way of causing us to reflect on our own assumptions about ministry. But we cannot give them the same weight of authority. To do that would require us to walk everywhere we go and to write letters to communicate with other believers because that is how Jesus and Paul did it. That would be legalistic folly.

It could however be a good idea to add a new bracelet next to our W.W.J.D bracelets, W.D.J.D - What DID Jesus do? Going back to Paul’s church planting method, he seems to have adopted the W.D.J.D model, looking at the example of how Jesus did ministry and then copying it almost to a T.  In Luke 10, Jesus sends out the 72 into new regions which he had not yet entered. They were to enter the city or town, proclaim the kingdom and then, if a person invited them into their home, they were to stay with that person. This is exactly what we see Paul doing in Philippi - proclaim the kingdom down by the river, stay with Lydia - and in Thessalonica - enter the city (the synagogue), stay with Jason. If you study Luke 10 and then follow Paul’s missionary journeys, you’ll see that he is following the example of Jesus. For Paul it seems, if it was the way Jesus did it, he would do it too.

I hope that as you immerse yourselves in scripture you will become more aware of how the descriptive examples of Jesus and the first church help fill in the gaps of the more prescriptive passages. It has certainly challenged me to grow in my ability to recognize what it is that I do that is built more on modern ideas from business or psychology or pop culture. It’s a hard challenge but a good one and leads me to prayerfully begin realigning my beliefs and behaviors with the teaching and example of scripture.​

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I long ago noticed that Bezalel and Oholiab are, as artisan creatives, the first people in the Bible to be ‘filled with the Spirit of God’ (Exodus 31:3) but I recently found, three chapters later, that they were also given the ability to teach others. The work seems to have been too big for them to accomplish alone - they are going to need to train others, to bring on apprentices who can join them at the craftsman’s table. The creation of the tabernacle and all of its components was God sized work and thus required a God sized workforce. This would only come about through the multiplication of workers and so God saw fit to give Bezalel and Oholiab the ability to teach and train others.

I wonder how Adam and Eve felt when God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it (Genesis 1:28). I’ve read that passage most of my life without really feeling the gravity of the God sized job that had been given to the first couple. I can wrap my mind around being fruitful and increasing in number, but fill the earth? Subdue it? I struggle to keep my lawn mowed but the whole earth? This is a God sized job! It could only be accomplished if the workers are multiplied and trained. And God seems focused on multiplication in Genesis 1:

• Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” (Day 3)
• God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” (Day 5)

Fruit seed is exponentially powerful. It is by nature multiplicative. An entire apple orchard lies hidden in the flesh of a single apple. Wheat to feed the nations is contained in a single wheat kernel. Multiplication is built into the very fabric of the cosmos - it is the way God created things. It is the pattern in nature and an intended pattern in the church as well.
 
Creatives like Bezalel and Oholiab were given the ability to teach others and to multiply their gifts. Jesus told his disciples to go and make disciples, to teach them to obey his teachings. He chose 12 good seeds knowing that as they do what he did, they will multiply (Matthew 28:18-20). Paul tells Timothy to take the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others (2 Timothy 2:2). And Christ gives the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-13).

Jesus tells us that He will build his church (Matthew 16:18) but we are to make disciples: to teach, to equip, to train, to entrust, to build up, to mentor, – to multiply. Disciple making at every level of the church would seem to be the Jesus method. Are you the pastor?  Who are you training and teaching to do your job? Are you a Sunday school teacher? Who are you inviting in alongside you to equip and prepare?  Are you a brand new believer? Who are you entrusting with the things you are learning? You don’t need to be a theologian, just obedient to teach someone the last new thing you learned about following the Lord.

God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and increase in number, to fill the earth and subdue it. Think about your town or city, your neighborhood or country - think about the unreached world, over 3 billion people who have no real access to the gospel. There are all kinds of good things we can do as Christians but making disciples is perhaps the most clear command we’ve received from Jesus and it is a principle found in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. If God called two artists to teach others to do the thing He had called them to do, He’s calling you as well.

Let’s multiply.

Let’s make disciples.

Not just the professionals but all of us.

​

A person born in 1900 came of age as World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic ravaged the world. They started their family in the affluence of the 20’s, raised that family through the dire poverty of the Great Depression and then, despite the promise that the war they fought would end all wars, sent their sons off to fight - and for many, to die in the Second World War. This jumble of life experience formed that generation. The context and circumstances of the decades we live through always form who we are and who we become. This was true for their generation, it’s true for ours and it will be true for our children's as well.

Gen Z, those born between 1997 and 2012 and currently ages twelve to twenty seven, are no different. The context and circumstances of their lives are forming them in the same sorts of ways previous generations were formed. Like those who came before them, this formation has caused them to have certain characteristics and values that make them different from previous generations in both positive and negative ways.

Gen Z however, is one of those unique generations living through a great turning point in history. The industrial economy is quickly giving away to the information economy. While past turning points, like the industrial revolution, were decades long and gave people the opportunity to plan and reflect and adapt, this cohort is living through a change that, in comparison, is happening overnight. The home computer showed up in the early 80s and became fairly common within a decade. The Internet - and this is where the turning point really takes shape - was accessible by 16 million people worldwide in 1995, had skyrocketed to 1 billion by 2005, 3.2 billion by 2015 and 5.4 billion today. The iPhone came out in 2007, social media in 2012 and the world has never been the same. One day we had computers and the Internet on our desk, the next day, they were in our pockets. The smartphone life is all Gen Z has ever known. For the rest of us, born prior to 1997, we had a different life and upbringing. Gen Z is the first generation to be formed by more than their immediate context and circumstances. Spending an average of 7 hours a day on their phones, the digital world they inhabit is undoubtedly forming who they are and who they will become as much, if not more, than their immediate context of the embodied world around them; their family, friends, neighborhood and religious communities.


[Read: The Missions Movement Needs Gen Z]


The Lausanne Movement recently released a report, “The State of the Great Commission”. In their online launch of the report, I jumped into the “What is Digital Life?” breakout session to walk through the findings. It was there that our host used the term, “Augmented Digital Identity” (ADI).  ADI is most often used in discussions of online security and blockchain and other things that I’ve not yet fully wrapped my mind around, but in this context, ADI was crystal clear. 

My identity growing up through my teen years was largely shaped by my available circumstances and context. My parents, teachers, youth pastor and friends were my main influence. Television was still coming through our antenna and the handful of channels didn’t offer much in the way of diverse thought. Our public and school libraries were treasure troves of information but were limited to the space available on the shelves. Reading Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and Mitchner’s 800 page tome, The Drifters gave me a romantic inclination toward a hippy lifestyle but it never got much more developed than trying to grow my hair out for a few months. There was just not enough input of these types of ideas to shape my identity in any lasting way. I still love the music of the late 60’s and early 70’s but beyond that I’m pretty plain Jane. 

Members of Gen Z however are being shaped by an onslaught of input from every corner of the world through their smartphones. I’ve not seen any comparative studies but I’d guess that Gen Z sees, reads, or watches more messages in a week than I came across in a year, maybe more.

As a rather disturbing example, in a recent study I came across in Jon Haidt’s new book The Anxious Generation and reported on in The New York Times, Tik Tok began pushing videos about eating disorders and self harm to 13 year old girls within 30 minutes of their joining the platform. A steady stream of any issue will begin to shape the identities of anyone and social media is created to do just that. The identities of Gen Z, like every generation, are being shaped by the circumstances and the context of their lives. It just so happens that theirs is the first generation to be shaped by a digital space rather than the real, flesh and blood spaces of their homes, neighborhood and schools. This is the augmented digital identity.

There is much that is problematic about the phone based life of many in Gen Z. Haidt’s book or his Substack After Babel would be excellent places to learn more. The augmented digital identity does however prepare Gen Z in unique ways to interact with an increasingly globalized world. They - and when I say “they” I mean Gen Z in every country on earth - have more in common with one another than any generation prior. Sixteen year olds in China and Mozambique, Canada and Mexico, the U.S. and Vietnam are all watching the same TikToks, seeing the same Instagram influencers and are all learning how to fix their iPhone from the same Youtube videos. They share gaming advice with one another on Discord and they openly mock those of us who still use Facebook. They are poised to work together in business and service better than any generation in history. Their embodied identities are still culturally defined by their local community but the augmented digital identity is flattening this out as it moves toward the center where they are interacting with people and content online from all over the world.

They are the most interculturally connected generation to ever walk the earth making them a generation poised and prepared to do great things in new ways. I for one want to learn how to support and encourage them in doing just that.

Also Read: Gen Z, Epic Learning and the Future of the Church

Missions committees. They are an important part of any small church and yet increasingly, it’s becoming more and more difficult to know if the churches they serve are all that interested. It can be an uphill battle to keep global missions at the forefront of church culture as congregations become busier than ever with frantic schedules and hurried lives. Previous generations saw missions as an important part of the duty of all Christians and so they joyfully gave to the work of global missions, attended missions emphasis events and prayed regularly for those missionaries whose pictures adorned refrigerator doors. Within younger generations, that emphasis is slipping and this can make the work of the missions committee difficult and frustrating.

I was recently reading the story of two small churches in rural Minnesota who, between their founding in the late 1870’s until 1980, had sent out 35 missionaries and 55 pastors. These two churches sent out a new missionary every three years! They did this by creating a strong culture focused on global missions. In 1887 they began celebrating the Fourth of July with a missions festival in addition to the quarterly missions festivals they already had. Ladies' prayer meetings for mission work and the missionaries they supported were held weekly for decades. Older members report that there was a general expectation that their young people would go into missions, the pastorate, the medical field or teaching - anything focused on serving. These churches had in them an ethos for missions.

While we probably won’t be able to talk our church leaders into five mission festivals a year, there are things we can do to grow a missions culture in our churches. In Turkish there is a proverb, “Damlaya, damlaya göl olur” – drop by drop a lake is formed. The focus of these ten ideas is to take small but consistent steps to increase awareness of God’s heart for the nations, working toward slow but steady growth in mission culture at your church.

Note: As our churches and world become increasingly digital, be sure and pay attention to how you talk about your missionaries, from the stage in particular, during Sunday morning services if they are being shared online. This creates a real challenge in telling the story of what God is doing in and through our missionaries, but their security and ability to remain in their country of service is vitally important. Make sure and have a good conversation with them about what is appropriate and not appropriate to share. Every missionary will have different contexts and different thoughts on their security. 


1.  It Starts With You
It’s an old truism that a leader can’t lead where he or she hasn’t been. In order to lead your church toward a more robust mission culture, the mission committee is going to need to lead the way. A few years ago I wrote Ten Ways to Focus on the Great Commission this Year. I’d encourage you to bring this article to your mission committee and discuss a few options to pursue together. Choose just one to get started with - even one is more than none and will be the first step toward greater missions awareness and excitement. Some of these will also show up in the rest of the list below.

2.  Movie Nights
Movie nights are a fun way to bring your congregation together for fellowship while also creating an opportunity to stir their hearts for the nations. You could host quarterly movie nights or one in the fall and another in the spring. Make these fun nights and perhaps open them up to the greater community. Pop popcorn, serve ice cream and after the movie is over, spend some time praying for your missionaries and the countries in which they serve. Make sure and preview the movies so you can let parents know if it would be appropriate for their kids. Here are a few movies that will encourage and challenge your congregation: End of the Spear | Beyond the Gates of Splendor | The Insanity of God | Many Beautiful Things: The Life and Vision of Lilias Trotter | Better Friends than Mountains | More Than Dreams Movies | The Distant Boat

3.  Serve The Kids
Investing early in the kids of your church will ensure that a heart for missions starts at a young age. Fill your church library with missionary biographies written for children and young adults [YWAM Publishing]. Have each Sunday school class “adopt” one of your missionary families. Hang their picture in the classroom along with a flag and a map of the country in which they serve. Make sure the teacher is getting the missionary’s newsletter and sharing updates with the kids. Pray for them every week and make sure the missionaries know there is a class of kids who are praying for them every week. Learn about a simple snack from the country and bring it to class for the kids to share. And, if the missionary family is visiting your church, make sure they spend the Sunday school hour with the kids. Some churches have a missions moment for the kids every day of VBS and take an offering to support their work. There are a lot of creative ideas for getting the kids of your church excited about missions.

4. Prayer Focus
A pastor friend of mine once told me that our hearts and minds follow our prayers and our pocketbooks. And so if we want our hearts to grow in a certain area, we need to focus on beginning to pray more for it and find ways to give towards it. I’ll focus on prayer here. It’s important that our congregations begin praying for our missionaries and the mission endeavors of our church. Here are a few ideas for how to do that:

1. Prayercast Videos - Prayercast creates powerful videos that are usually 3-5 minutes long and focus on particular countries by creating a beautiful video montage with a native of that country praying for their people. These can be helpful to play during a church service, small group or a specific prayer meeting for missions. Here are a few examples: Turkey | Ukraine | Bangladesh They also have religion specific videos that can be very helpful: Islam | Judaism | Ayatollah Khamenei
2. Prayer Guides - There are a lot of different prayer guides being produced for people groups, countries and religious festivals. These are often 30 day guides, sometimes in print and others through email, but all of them will both help your congregations pray and also help them learn more about the work that the missionaries we send are apart of. Here are a few examples: 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim World | 15 Days of Prayer for the Hindu World | Voice of the Martyrs Global Prayer Guide | Let All the Peoples Praise You
3. Prayer Events - As you build the culture of prayer in your church it will be important to begin to host regular prayer events for your missionaries and the great commission needs of our world. You want the majority of the time to be spent in prayer but it can be good to start with some worship, utilize a prayercast video or two and have a prayer focus for the night or a list of topics to be praying through. Reach out to your missionaries a week before the event and ask if there are specific ways you can be praying for them.

5.  Missionary Focus
It’s important to keep your missionaries and the missions efforts of your church and denomination continually in front of your congregation. If the only time they hear about a missionary family you support is when they come and visit every 3-4 years, there’s not going to be a lot of relationship built. Without relationship, prayers will be meager and support lacking. So one thing a mission committee can work toward is ensuring that the congregation gets to know the missionaries supported by the church. And while the missionaries themselves have a role to play in this, the mission committee is most equipped to actually make it happen. A few ideas have already been discussed in the previous topics. And like the prayer focus above, I’ll offer a number of bullet points with ideas for how to do this better.

1. Share Their Stories - When you get a newsletter from a missionary, find ways to share highlights with the congregation. This could be as an announcement on a Sunday morning, an insert in the bulletin, an email in the church email chain or a text to members of the church.Video Updates. Invite your missionaries to create 2-4 minute video updates to share with the church several times a year. This is something they can create with their phone and will allow your congregation to see and hear from them more regularly.
2. Monthly Focus - Consider using a month to focus on a missionary. One week you could share a video update. The next week you could use a Prayercast video about the country in which they serve. Another week could be just a story or testimony about a person they’ve impacted. You can be creative but make sure and pray for them each week as well as a congregation. If you have six missionaries your church supports you could do this every other month and cover them all in the course of the year.
3. Serve Them - It is important to get your congregation involved in serving them as well. Send cards at Christmas and allow some in your congregation to write a short note of blessing. Invite the congregation to contribute to send gifts to the kids of the missionaries. You’ll want to communicate with mom and dad first to see what would be best. Bless your missionaries with a gift card to Amazon or Starbucks (you’d be surprised how easy it is to find a Starbucks around the world these days). Find ways to bless these families as they serve in the field.
4. Utilize their Time - When missionaries are on home assignment and are going to be coming and visiting your church work in advance to plan their time with you. Have them visit the kids’ Sunday school class who have been praying for them. Give them time to share from the stage during the service. Provide a table for them in the entryway where people can learn more and talk with them after the service. Help them get people signed up for their newsletter. Do you have small groups? See if you can have them visit small groups to share in a smaller setting. This will allow more people to hear from them but it will also communicate your interest in and desire to partner well with the missionary. When they come all the way to your church just to share a five minute update after which few people talk with them, it can be hard for missionaries to feel like the congregation is even interested in them or their work.

6.  Short Term Missions
Many of the missionaries I know point back to short term ministry or mission trips as instrumental in beginning to shape their hearts toward making Christ known among the nations. Creating opportunities for youth and adults from your church to engage in short term missions then is a fantastic opportunity to disciple hearts and cast vision for missions. Talk to the missionaries you have sent out and see if there are opportunities to come and serve with them or if their sending organization has short term mission trips. You can find other opportunities at: Global Gates Sifting Week | Adventures in Missions | Ethnos 360 | Praying Pelican | Crescent Project

7.  The Perspectives Course
Perspectives in the World Christian Movement is a powerful 15 week course that will give participants a new “perspective” on God’s heart for the nations. The Perspectives course is another launch point for many of the missionaries I talk with who claim it was this course that sent them on a trajectory toward the mission field. Classes are available in person or online.  Perspectives in the World Christian Movement 

There are also other curriculums similar to Perspectives that can be used for Sunday school classes or small groups. These kinds of classes can be a simple way to help your congregation to be more informed about God’s missionary heart and what He is doing to bring the nations to himself. A few of these include: Storyline | The Bridges Study | God’s Heart For The Nations

8.  Vision Trips
Vision trips are different from short term mission trips. They are for a small group of people from your congregations who are A) considering long term missions and want to learn more, B) Leaders in your church who you as the missions committee want to gain a deeper understanding and heart for God’s work among the nations, C) People who can specifically serve the missionary family you are going to visit, D) Prayer warriors, and E) Members of the missions committee. It doesn’t need to be all of these but as you can see, the focus of the trip is not on the personal discipleship of those who are going like it may be on a short term mission trip. The group isn’t going so much to serve as to listen and learn.

These trips are about deepening relationships and helping you as a sending church move toward deeper levels of engagement and understanding. They could also be about exploring new opportunities for partnership in new locations.

9.  Host a Conference
It can be a lot of work, but is an opportunity to put together a great weekend program to help encourage your church to catch a vision for missions and the work God is doing in drawing the nations to himself. It can also be a great opportunity to partner with other local churches in order to share the workload and costs of a conference and to get out of our respective silos to do kingdom work together. Some organizations are looking for churches to partner with and will bring in the content and speakers. Crescent Project’s Bridges One Day is an example of this. There are also a lot of great conferences going on across the world that will be an encouragement to those who go.  Here are a few:  Sinai Summit (online and free) | Moody Bible Mission Conference | Cross Conference | You can find a complete list of conferences, trainings and other missions events at Missions Catalyst

10.  Missionary Hosting
Several times a year one or more of the missionaries you support will come and visit your church. They are most likely on what used to be called their furlough though that term was never accurate. That word conveys the idea that their work has been suspended for a season, that they are on vacation or a break. And this is categorically not what three months back in one’s home country feels like. One agency I’ve worked with now calls these times away from their country of service as their Ministry in North America (MINA) which is much more accurate. It is ministry and it is work.

Some missionaries will put thousands of miles on a vehicle over the course of two to three months in the summer. Nearly every weekend finds them in a new church, engaging with new people, working to meet unsaid expectations and for some, all of this with kids in tow. When they come and visit your church, my challenge to you is to make that time as special and meaningful for them and their family as possible. Missionaries aren’t proud of it, but we all have a mental list in our heads of the churches they can’t wait to go back to and the ones they dread. So how do you become a “can’t wait to get back to” kind of church? Here are a few ideas:

1. Communicate Well - You’ll have to discover what a colleague of mine calls their “communication love language”.  Some people email. Others text. Some just want a phone call. Missionaries may do most of their communicating on Whatsapp. Whatever it is, once you find it, begin communicating early with them once you hear they are coming back to the states. I’ll cover some of the other details of this below but make sure they feel wanted and welcome. Ask lots of questions to learn what their expectations and needs are. Do they need to raise a lot of extra money this year or are they just wanting to tell the story of what God is doing and raise up more prayer support? As you communicate, remember that they may be in the midst of a long road trip and may be setting up meetings all along the way. You may need to be patient if you don’t hear back right away. If it’s been a week, send a gracious reminder. They are probably having the same kinds of conversations with many others and will appreciate the reminder.
2. Lodging - Every family is different so make sure and ask the missionary coming to visit what they would prefer for lodging while they are with you. Some will want to stay with a family - this will be more likely if ample opportunities have been made in the past to build relationships. Others, especially those with kids, might really feel blessed to stay at the local hotel with a mini water park inside. Another missionary family might love the chance to stay at a cozy Airbnb or someone’s guest house.
3. Schedule - While most missionaries I know would love to be invited to share in multiple classrooms, small groups and in the service as I mentioned above, some may be in a season that just doesn’t allow that. If they have small kids, they may not want to drag their toddlers to six different events during the few days they visit. My kids disliked going to new churches every weekend when they were small. Those are the kinds of challenges your missionary family may be struggling with. Letting them know that there is grace for whatever works best for them will go a long way in helping them have a good experience at your church.
4. The Small Things - There are lots of small things you can do to make their stay with your church a good experience. If they have small kids, a gift bag for each with some things inside (things you’ve asked mom and dad to help you pick out) will go a long way toward blessing the whole family. A well stocked Starbucks gift card will allow mom and dad to enjoy coffee as they travel. The offer of a date night for the parents (give them a gift card to a favorite local restaurant) will allow them to have much needed time together - something that is desperately hard to find when traveling from church to church. And because most missionaries are on a pretty tight budget, it can be a real blessing to give them a small cash gift to help with their travel expenses.
5. Make Space for Relationships - The most important thing that any missionary takes away from a visit to your church will be relationships. Relationships only grow with time and so you need to create the time for that to happen. As a mission committee it's a great idea to share a meal with your missionaries after the service on Sunday to just hear more from them. If one of the kids in the church makes a good relationship with one of the missionary’s kids, encourage them to become pen pals, either in the traditional manner or through email or social media. Whatever you can do to help foster relationships and build a real partnership will go a long way to serving the missionaries you support.

​This list of ten ideas is not meant to overwhelm. Celebrate the things you are already doing and pick one or two to try and initiate in the future. If you keep at it with patient endurance you will slowly see your congratulation grow in both their understanding of their role in the great commission and their passion to be a part of it.

If you have other ideas you seen or tried at your church, please share them in the comments below.

By Sonora L Myers

Malachi and I had sent mom and dad to enjoy a romantic meal for their anniversary which they had forgotten about until an hour ago. Left to buy dinner for ourselves, we decided to head back to the little döner restaurant with the scabby, stray cat that we’d eaten at the day before. We had stopped a moment outside of Starbucks when two small boys approached wanting to sell us cheap, blue, foam flower crowns. The city was so full of beggars and small children selling crafts and packets of kleenex that I had begun to grow insensitive to their presence.

So when the small boys asked if we would like a flower crown, I quickly brushed the offer aside with a polite Turkish ‘tsk’ and said, “Biz iyiz” (we’re good). Surprised that we ‘foreigners’ could speak Turkish, they inquired about how two Americans knew their language. I was tired - emotionally, physically and mentally. This evening was our last day of our month-long sojourn in Europe and Turkey. After weeks of exerting my poor Turkish skills to their maximum communication and comprehension levels as we reunited with old friends, helped a church minister to many small villages in the earthquake zone and played with the kids on Gypsy Hill, I had little capacity for a chit chat with these two children. Shrinking back, I stood and zoned out as Malachi answered their probing questions. 

I was mindlessly waiting for them to leave us in peace so we could go and enjoy our dinner when, as I stood there, passive to anything but my own tired brain, one of the little boys broke from the conversation, approached me, and in one swift motion reached up and placed a foam flower crown on my head. His childish little face lit up in the sweetest smile as he said, “Bu senin için abla” (This is for you big sister). And just as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, drifting around the corner and into the crowd.

I stood stunned for a moment and then it was like I woke up from a long slumber to where I was - Kuşadası, Turkey, to the people rushing around us on all sides, to the beauty, to the need, to my utter desensitization to life. I stood in the insecurity I felt by my blundering attempts to communicate in a language I hadn’t spoken since I was six, in my feeling of vulnerability and fatigue and the need to remain dignified and not look foolish. I had built up walls around my heart, had taken up my home in a cold brick castle rather than humbly accepting the warm hospitality of the country and people of Turkey. I had allowed my own limitations to limit my heart. Rather than becoming personal, I withdrew and became private. I closed my eyes to my presence in a place full of people that God desperately wanted a relationship with. I didn’t put myself in the Lord’s hands, trusting that he would protect me and use my vulnerability but rather, I protected myself at the cost of losing sight of what mattered most. I choose security over generosity. I acted out of a place of scarcity rather than leaning into the rich abundance of God. 

I still have that flower crown. I keep it as a reminder to be generous, not just with my money but with everything; my time, my attention, my energy, myself.  I keep it as a reminder to live out of humility in the security of the Lord rather than self-forged walls and a castle with closed gates.
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It’s been a full season of ministry, of working on good, kingdom projects and investing in people that God brings across my path. In every way, ministry has been rewarding, purposeful and mostly, a lot of fun. I really do love the work of the ministry I’m a part of.

And yet.

What started as a tiredness which I attributed to my week-long battle through on and off fever and a hacking cough - it’s been going around - has now settled into a low grade feeling of blah. It’s not depression. It’s not despair and I wrestle to even know how to explain it but it's there. And as I actually sit with it and think back, it's been there for a while, weeks perhaps. 

It is unfortunately a familiar feeling, something that visits once, sometimes twice a year and which usually, as Douglas Rumford observes, follows a season where I find myself “unable to keep all the fires that we’ve started fueled.” I took on too much. One project in particular has turned into a bit of a roller coaster of on again off again waiting with a lot riding on my shoulders. 

At this point it’s just a season of the blahs, of fighting to stay motivated and occasionally feeling tired throughout the day. I’m thankful that I’ve had good mentors and friends that have taught me to see the symptoms and through the years I have learned to respond proactively and early. It is easy to see however that, left untended, this sort of season could easily descend into full scale burnout. We read about it in others more than we’d like and wonder why it happens so often to pastors and leaders and regular people alike.

One thing that I often find helpful is to pick up a book on the topic of soul care - that’s what it is after all - and so yesterday I began Douglas Rumford’s Soul Shaping.  I’m just one chapter in but found this first chapter, “Recognizing the Symptoms of Soul Neglect” an excellent resource for anyone wondering if they are wandering into the beginnings of the blahs or the blues or the dark night of the soul. His list of ten symptoms is a useful rubric to hold yourself up to if you’re not quite sure. The list is a simple tool which will help you reflect on the state of your soul. 

I won’t explain each here, most are pretty easy to understand, but I’d encourage you to prioritize setting aside regular time to reflect on your life and thoughts and how your soul is doing. In our hurried, harried lives of the 21st century few prioritize anything other than keeping busy doing productive things. This of course flies in the face of John 15 and the abiding life that Jesus calls us to but it seems the siren song we cannot restrain ourselves from following. 

Here are Rumford’s list of ten soul symptoms:

1. Low Grade “Depression Fever”
2. Busy But Bored
3. Loss Of Control Over Life’s Routine
4. Loss Of Responsiveness To Others
5. Withdrawal From Responsibility And Leadership
6. Preoccupation With Projects Of Lesser Importance
7. Restlessness And Dissatisfaction
8. Resurgence Of Unhealthy Habits, Diminished Impulse Control And Diminished Resistance To Temptation
9. Guilt And Shame
10. A Hard Heart

It should be noted that everyone will find themselves in seasons like this from time to time. There are things we can do to guard against it but we do live in a broken world. We started the article with a Psalm of David, a man after God’s heart and he sounds like he’s in a pretty dark place. The Apostle Paul once wrote that he “despaired of life itself” (1 Corinthians 1:8). Charles Spugeon, in a talk to ministerial students, once said, “Fits of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy.”

If you reflect on the list above and find you check off more of the symptoms than you’d like to admit, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve somehow been disobedient to God or failed. It does mean that you probably need to take steps to return to a place of greater soul health though.

Near the end of the chapter, Rumford says, “Paying attention to our hearts is the first step to valuing ourselves – as God values us – and to setting us free to value and love others – as God through Christ values and loves  them.”

Set aside some time this week - a good half day or so - to sit with the Lord and reflect on the state of your soul. 

Other Helpful Books

• Embracing Soul Care by Stephen W. Smith
• Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by Pete Scazzero
• Leading on Empty by Wayne Cordiero
• Do you have a book you've found helpful for this topic? Share it in the comments.

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Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and the holy month of fasting for Muslims. It is the month that, according to Islam, the first book of the Qu'ran was revealed to Mohammed. For the month of Islam, Muslims fast from sun up to sun down, breaking the fast with the nightly iftar meal. Traditionally, the fast is broken by eating three dates following the example of Mohammed. The 27th night of Ramadan is Laylat al-Qadr or the Night of Power. This year Ramadan begins on March 10th and ends April 8th.

Here are a few ways you can learn more and pray:

Ramadan isn’t just for Muslims. It’s an opportunity for Christians, too- This helpful article from Crescent Project offers a host of creative ways you can love your Muslim friends and neighbors during Ramadan.

30 Days of Prayer Guide - order your free copy of the the 30 Days of Prayer for the Muslim world. This daily prayer guide has been helping Christians pray for Muslims during Ramadan since 1993.

Pray 15 Minutes a Day - Pray4Movements is once again hosting a 24/7 prayer initiative throughout the month of Ramadan.  Scroll down on the website to see what countries and Muslim people groups you can pray for.

Crescent Project Radio - The Crescent Project radio is a great source of information and inspiration.  Each episode is an interview of about 30 minutes, with authors, practitioners, former Muslims and more.

On the Road to No Place Left - Season 7 of the podcast is focused on the Muslim world featuring great interviews with missionaries and former Muslims.  

Read a Good Book: Check out the books that have been reviewed here at the E2E blog. They'll fuel your motivation and encourage your faith.
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Those over forty have known little else but lecture and reading as the ways we learn. While these may have worked for us, we need to rethink how we teach and make disciples of our younger counterparts. As a member of the Gen X cohort, I still love to learn in these ways, but it’s not about me. We need to explore this new way of teaching because it is the way Gen Z learns, because it’s actually more in line with the disciple making principles of Jesus, and because, if we don’t, we’ll probably begin to lose more and more of them as they find the church and mission agency irrelevant and more interested in protecting institutional traditions than in building the kingdom.

It seems in many ways  like the church in North America is approaching a hinge moment in history. Changes are coming. The church as we know it may be on its last leg. It may not look the same in the future. It may lose its institutional nature. It may no longer be able to support fully paid professionals.

Two things are for certain however: The Church will continue to be the means through which Christ’s kingdom expands and it will be led by Gen Z.

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