Samaritan’s Purse

• Food for Sudan
• Emergency Field Hospital Sudan
• Food for South Sudan
• Women’s Health in Sudan
• Relief for Ukraine

Compassion International

• Sponsor a child in Guatemala 
• Sponsor a child in El Salvador 

​Blood:Water Mission

• Clean Water in Africa

​
Further Reading

• The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

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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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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.
​

“I can’t see anything dad.”

     My seven year old son squeezed my hand ever tighter as we both recognized the obvious truth of his statement. He and I along with my wife and five year old daughter had scrambled up the canyon wall in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey where we were hiking and had climbed into the entrance of a man made cave, a tunnel actually, that angled back into the cliff face and into what we knew from our guidebook was probably a complex of tunnels and rooms; the ancient homes of an ancient people.  We had walked the sandy path for nearly twenty yards when we came to a right hand turn. The tunnel was four feet across and just over five feet tall, a rectangular shaft cut straight and true. A few steps into our right turn and we had run out of light. There was a shadowed outline of what appeared to be another tunnel or perhaps a doorway a few feet further into the gloom but beyond that we could see nothing. Darkness stretched out before us.
     
     I crouched to rest my bent back and together we discussed our options. We had taken a tour of an amazing underground city the day before which had ignited the flames of our inner explorers. Unfortunately, while none of us wanted to turn back, we didn’t have a flashlight. The flip phone I had at the time didn’t have a flashlight and the gray green glow of its one inch square screen gave barely enough light to see our hands in front of our faces. What we did have was our compact digital camera which had a flash. It was worth a try and so I pointed the camera into the smothering darkness and took a picture. In an instant the tunnel burst into light and just as quickly receded back into darkness.  In that moment however we had seen a vision of the future; there wasn’t just one doorway on the left, there were three evenly spaced entrances off of the main tunnel we were in, a tunnel which disappeared ahead in a distant darkness.

     Dragging my hand along the wall, we made our way into the darkness until we came to the fist cleft in the sandstone. Another flash and we knew it was the entrance to a small and rather insignificant room. The next was the same but the third entrance led into a room that had a very large and rather deep pit carved into its floor. From our tour the day before we knew this had most likely been used to store grain in ages past, however the possibility of stumbling into one of these deep pits was unnerving. We squatted for another conference, reiterating to the kids to stay together and agreeing to not take any unnecessary risks. We proceeded another thirty yards or so when we noticed light ahead. We made our way forward and found a tunnel returning to the face of the cliff. It was another way out and it brought both relief and courage.

     We turned back into the darkness and continued to explore. When we ventured deep enough, the light was non-existent and we rarely knew what was beyond the edge of our flash. Ten feet at a time, we wandered this complex of tunnels and rooms, discovering what felt like ancient secrets, including a large room where we imagined the community gathering for meals or worship. Fear and joy mingled as we spent the next hour chasing the light into the darkness.

     As I read the Biblical stories, it seems that in many ways, faith is the simple act of chasing light into the darkness. When Moses’ mother coated a papyrus basket with tar and pitch she was simply taking the next step of faith. She hadn’t seen the whole story but in faith, she had followed the flash of God’s grace into the darkness. Moses’ sister had only seen a glimpse of a better future but she knew her God and so she took tentative, faith-filled steps into the river where she waited, standing in the shadows, standing in the muck and mire of the river, standing in the light of expectation.  Joseph’s dream was followed by a pit and slavery and prison but he held on to hope, trusting that God was working behind the scenes and would remain true. When the twelve disciples watched their risen Lord ascend into heaven, the great commission was still ringing in their ears. Go and make disciples of all nations. The whole world was the vision Jesus had given them and yet they had no budget, no buildings, and no infrastructure to speak of. They did have a promise, that Jesus would be with them until the very end of the age, and they’d spent three years watching Jesus do the work of His kingdom and so they simply moved forward into the next thing God showed them.

     The story of the book of Acts is the story of the disciples peering down dark tunnels expectantly looking for the light to flash. They lived with a deep trust that God was working and that His kingdom would expand. They knew beyond a shadow of a doubt what they were supposed to do - Go make disciples of all nations - but they didn’t necessarily know how it would get accomplished. They prayed and planned and took daily steps of faith, all the while trusting that God was orchestrating His will. As the disciples took those daily steps of faith, God stepped with them into their context to infuse it with His power in His timing. It is the faithfulness of the disciples that is paramount. The planning was helpful. The strategies were important.  But as Andy Stanley points out,  “believers with vision live with the knowledge that “how” may come about independently from their planning. But it will not come about apart from their faithfulness. Faithfulness is critical to success.”*

     This is the pattern I watch weekly in the volunteers who serve in Crescent Project’s Embassy ministry which I help lead. Embassy works to equip followers of Jesus to go into the online spaces where Muslims congregate. There they build rich, lifelong friendships through which they’ll have the opportunity to share the good news of Jesus as they share their lives. Every interaction is an act of faith. The will of the Father is clear - He desires that none should perish so he sent his only begotten son to seek and save the lost and to give His life as a ransom.  In Jesus is life and that life is the light for all mankind. While the vision of the Father is clear, how it will actually come about is another question all together. Meaningful scriptures shared with Muslim friends are met with smug comments that give no hint of interest in the gospel. Honest probing questions are deflected and avoided. For many of our volunteers it can be a long, bent-backed slog through tunnels of darkness as Muslim friends respond with seeming indifference. And yet as we look to the scriptures we find hope that the Father is drawing people to Christ. He is at work behind the scenes whether we realize it or not.  Seeds are planted which the Holy Spirit will water in His time.

     This truth was highlighted in the story of a young lady from Central Asia. One of our Embassy volunteers had been laboring for nearly two years, meeting only indifference and the needy immaturity of a nineteen year old teen wanting to learn English even as she became a sort of surrogate aunt for this young lady. But then Covid-19 spread across the globe carrying in its wake a growing sense of anxiety and fear. This young lady was swept into a dark tunnel of despair and insomnia. And then suddenly a light flashed in her heart as the prayer of our volunteer struck a nerve. A prayer in Jesus' name broke down a door of insomnia. A prayer in Jesus’ name brought a bright calm into a heart swirling in the darkness of increasing anxiety. An invitation to read the scriptures was hesitantly accepted and a few months later this young lady placed her trust in Jesus. The blinders fell off and she stepped into the light.

     It is a truth that you can can almost certainly trace back through your own journey of faith. Someone took a risk to share with you. Someone stepped through their fear to point you to the truth. Something happened that in the moment seemed like disaster. Faith always requires the active pursuit of light into darkness. The writer of Hebrews reminds us that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”.

     We rarely know what lies on the other side of the darkness, but as we take steps of faith, as we move forward in prayer and hope,  as we step into the light - even the dim flashes born of our weak faith - God shows up. 

* This quote is from Andy Stanley's book, Visioneering: Your guide for discovering and maintaining personal vision (2016). Multnomah Publishers. (pg. 58)

Learn more about Crescent Project and Embassy.
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I saw you today.
Walking past my office window, 
dumpster to dumpster with drag foot strides.
I saw you - all of you.
You two mothers pushing your finds in converted baby buggies, 
babies slung over bent backs, 
one tugging at the slack edge of a scarlet head scarf.
Your three and four year olds – 
boys in rags and broken sandals – 
trailed, 
sometimes behind, sometimes squirting ahead, 
but always walking wearily, 
wary of the ways of the back of your hand.
Harsh hands and harsher words carry them down dumpster lined streets.
The four year old’s mother
hands an unpeeled orange to his open hand,
rescued from refuse, but fails to peel it. 
He makes a marvelous mess of pulp and juice before she,
the giver, the guardian, 
slaps it from his greedy fingers.
On they walk, 
on into their gypsy life, 
their wandering life, 
their hungry life,
And they disappear.

Later,
a father came.
A father with another four year old 
and another converted baby buggy 
and another journey down an Istanbul street, 
dumpster to dumpster, market to market, 
meal to meal to find to find.
He stopped the buggy behind a black Mercedes, 
said stay – to the buggy and the boy –
and crossed to a waiting meal in the market trash.
The boy stayed, 
lips moving – presumably for himself though I could not hear, 
fingers fondling the days find.
But then a man approached, 
middle aged and well dressed, 
talking kind words to the boy, beckoning – 
And the boy went, without qualm 
quickly on his heels and into the next door store.
But then the father returned, 
smiling at the two bruised apples and a smashed orange in his hands 
to find the buggy but not the boy.
I saw it then.
I saw how much love he harbored in his tired heart for his son.
I saw it in the fear that crept into his eyes.
I saw it in the terror of his movements 
and in the two new bruises the apples received 
as they hit the concrete at his broken sandals.
I saw it in his hands, cupped around shouting lips –
And finally, 
I saw it in the flood of relief that his smiling son 
gave him when he bolted from the store, 
cookies clutched in jubilant hands.
Relief came.
A broken heart was not broken more.
The middle aged man walked past the two, 
a silent Samaritan not letting left know what right had done.
On he walked, 
on into his Muslim life, 
his secular life, 
his blessed life.
And he disappeared.

Later,
I walk home along the sea, 
praying for this nation, 
praying for grace and discernment to be salt and light to this land.
I stop at the store, 
mindlessly buying four kinds of noodles, 
not knowing what we’ll make with them.
My groceries and I make our way to the tunnel where 
I will cross the tracks and head for home. 
But there
On a concrete bench
Sit two tired teenage boys.
“Mister, we’re hungry.  Do you have any food?  Do you have any money?”
I stop, surprised.
“Would you like some noodles?”
I offer to blank stares and then add –
“You can cook them at home.”
Their look tells me they may not have a home.
“We’re hungry mister.  Do you have any money?”
“No.”
I turn and I walk
And I cross the tracks
And walk from them
And disappear. 
But the five lira in my pocket doesn’t disappear.
And the words of Jesus don’t disappear.
“You will always have the poor among you.”
Among you.
It seems now more a command than a fact.
A command I’ve missed through a sham of fact.
Among you.
If the poor are not among us,
Could it be we disobey?

I surely did today.
I surely did today.

A short video sharing a framework for understanding suffering.  This framework has helped me understand the role of suffering in the life of the disciple of Jesus.  The sound quality isn't perfect, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.  What would you add to this framework?  How have you been developing a theology of suffering? 

​Share your thoughts in the comments below.