The World Awaits

My original title to this was going to be “Would somebody stand up and say this is stupid!” but I changed by mind and decided to draw upon Neil Postman’s idea of informing ourselves to death with our new communications technology.

I use the tools, but I am seeing a trend that is worrisome when it comes to the seduction of all the gadgetry that is now available. I got a bit exercised when I read the notes from a talk given about how to get those in the 30 and under bracket to support mission. Without going into detail, my first reaction was, how in the world will we ever have time to actually do mission when we are busy capturing things to communicate with these folks?

The message was, if you want to get these people on board you need to be in virtually constant digital communication. Apparently tangibility is the issue and unless people are made to feel like they are part of the process they will not “give.” None of this of course is news, as relationships have always been the key factor in support. However, the game has been changed radically with the introduction of digital communication and the “always online” environment.

My concern is for those of my younger colleagues who are beginning career mission and for whom this age bracket will form their primary support base. Cross-cultural mission is complex and labor intensive work…maintaining a strong devotional life, devoting hours to prayer, language and culture learning, developing redemptive relationships, building disciples and so on are things that demand concentration and intentionality. The problem is not simply the time needed to capture some of this stream and communicate it to others…traditional missionary newsletters are time consuming.

It is something that goes much deeper than skillful use with technology, it has to do with framing perspective. Once you insert the value or ethos of having to “capture” the right kinds of things for your audience who has an insatiable need for tangibility and real-time info via video, tweets, facebook posts and and so on you introduce a second level abstracted kind of consciousness to what you are doing. You are no longer engaged one hundred percent, but become a kind of actor-director with an eye on “getting the right shot”, nailing the right soundbite. And that need for a communications perspective introduces all kinds of undesirable things into the equation because it then becomes way too tempting to begin to manufacture “work” the audience likes, rather than doing what is truly important and driven from biblical convictions.

I would love to see pastors tackle this tangibility issue because if they were being held to the same communication strictures minus secretaries and staff to help produce this stuff, they would feel like they could not get any work done either. So the next generation of younger cross-cultural workers needs help to be able to focus on doing the things that make for best practice work that produces lasting spiritual fruit and not having to constantly be participating while looking through the lens of an electronic device or have one eye on a keyboard.

It has been interesting spending most of my adult life outside of the USA and working in a place that has very few Christians. I have watched from afar the intense pressure that pastors face to “grow the church”. Unfortunately, in a world of instant communication and jet travel, the anxieties of the West do not take long to spread abroad to other places. The same universalist assumption that research findings developed in one setting are assumed to work across the board in all cultural settings applies to notions about church growth. Having a large church that numbers in the thousands, no matter how or when one came into the process, puts a mantle of authority on such people so that they can “tell how it is done”.

There is mounting evidence that can be tracked down that shows that in terms of lasting fruit and kingdom values that there are some difficulties with the conventional wisdom that bigger, in terms of the size of a single congregation, is always better.

Where this issue touches me personally as a cross-cultural worker is how this value system of “bigger is better” touches the emotions of pastors in smaller churches. An unintended consequence of church growth as a movement has been the disempowering and discouraging of many pastors. They are discouraged because they feel at fault because the church is not growing and thus inadequate, and rather than focusing on what they can do they often fixate on all of the resources they don’t have in relation to a megachurch.

I have found that helping pastors to delink doing the mission from church size to be helpful. Our focus needs to be doing God’s will at the spot we are in with the resources he has given us. This means that we cannot try to reproduce the structures and programs of larger churches but need to ask the Holy Spirit for guidance about how to share the good news and love people in our place and time.

This allows us to have ministry with joy. Many pastors affirm that Jesus came to give abundant life but then in their own personal lives they are stressed and depressed. Much of this stress and depression comes from feeling like they are failing because the church is not growing. My recommendation is that we find our joy in loving and obeying God and leave results and how believers will aggregate up to him. 

When we ask the question, “Why reach the least-reached?”, part of the answer lies in the terminology that makes up the question. In common Christian usage in English, to “reach” a person, means to bring the Gospel to them, and “reached” then are those who have heard and in some degree responded. When we put the descriptor least-reached, or un-reached on this word, in common usage it lends itself to the notion of those who are not Christians.

However, the way we are using these terms here today and in mission circles is as a technical term to describe the status of the Christian movement among a group of people bound together by language and culture. Several decades ago, missions researchers began to gather information about how people were responding to the Gospel, not simply at the level of nation-state/geopolitical boundaries, but at the ethnolinguistic level. This finer grained analysis revealed that while Christian movements had been founded in virtually every nation-state of our world, there were vast numbers of discrete languages, castes, and social groupings that were untouched with the Gospel message.

The unwritten assumption of the modern mission movement was a kind of “one-size-fits-all” notion: that if one version of the Christian faith takes root in a geographic location, it will spread naturally throughout that area, irregardless of cultural and linguistic differences. However, in the propagation of the Gospel, the one-size-fits all notion, unlike with clothing, does not work. Today, we have databases of all the ethnolinguistic groups of our world and the status of Christianity among them and what it reveals is a shocking divide in terms of access.

While there are people among every nation-state, tribe and tongue who are eternally lost, a fourth of our world does not have any access to the saving message…no near neighbor who can share the story of Jesus, no culturally relevant church they can visit, in many cases not a single verse of Scripture in their language, no Christian media. Researchers are now telling us that in the three great world religions that occupy this red-zone, 86% do not know a single Christian.

So when we ask the question, “Why reach the least-reached?” we are not posing the question of evangelism of our own near neighbors or the growth of our already existing churches. Rather we are talking about the apostolic, pioneering task of making Christ known among the over 2 billion people who live culturally and geographically beyond a relevant witness.

One could make the observation that this seems like a strange question for Pentecostals in general and particularly the 65 million strong Assemblies of God World Fellowship. But we are in serious danger of falling into the trap in our sending of cross-cultural workers to work among areas with already existing church movements and large numbers of Christians, while neglecting those with no access. One writer notes that practically everyone now seems to agree that Christian World Mission refers to “the redemptive activities of the church within the societies where the church is found (at home or abroad). But note, the phrase no longer needs point to the redemptive activity of the church within societies where the church is not found.” We cannot let this be true of Pentecostal mission!

 Missions researchers tell us that less than 3% of all personnel and finance flow into this red zone. The reality is that we as Pentecostals are not doing much better. Those of us who trace our spiritual heritage to the restoration of the apostolic church need a fresh dose of apostolic vision and passion to go where Christ is not named among us.

 Why reach the least-reached?

 First, because it is unambiguously part of God’s redemptive mission…

From Genesis 12:3 …all the families of the earth will be blessed,

The prophetic vision of the nations streaming to worship Yahweh in Zion,

To the 5 Commissions in the New Testament to disciple, preach, go as the Father sent Jesus to the uttermost parts of the earth,

To the final magnificent vision in Revelation 5:9 and 7:9 where John ransacks his lexicon to show that no one is missed-with representatives from every tribe and tongue and people and nation stand in worship before the throne.

Second, because of the prophetic voice of the database of the worlds peoples is clear…we know where the Church is not, we know where there are the fewest or no Christians, and we cannot “unknown” this information. We cannot stand before the judgment seat of Christ and plead ignorance, and we will be hard pressed to explain how knowing this we did not pour prayer, resources and people into the world of the unreached.

 Finally, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of harvest. Acts 1:8 is our watchword-when the Spirit comes we receive power to be his witnesses to the uttermost parts of the earth. We as Pentecostals need to tread carefully lest our assertion of being led by the Spirit does not end up to be mere rhetoric in the face of all the places we have manifestly not gone. It is inconceivable that the Holy Spirit, who loves all people and is not willing that any should perish, would not be calling laborer into the harvest fields of the least-reached. The imbalance in the world today reflects more our inability to hear, and our hardness of heart, than God the Father, Son, and Spirit overlooking millions of people who have no one in their sociocultural setting to tell them the story of salvation.

Father, open our eyes to the world of the unreached.

A couple of years ago at a large church in N. America I thought I was losing my mind. I was sharing with a small group about the unreached world, and in grasping for an illustration, I asked them to tell me what sports they saw being played on Sunday morning as they drove to their church. Many times when I drove to the church I saw numerous brown skinned people, some with turbans, in white uniforms, playing cricket. The people said, football, basketball and softball. I pressed them again. They saw nothing else. I was dumbfounded. I then asked a friend who lived across the street. Same answer. I then asked the Sr. Pastor who drives to that building past that park numerous times a week. Same answer.

We cannot see those who are different than us! They are hidden from our view. Lord reveal to our eyes the 2 billion plus people in this world that every General Council would build a sending structure so they can send people to those who have never heard! Tell the Lord, I will see them, give me eyes to see.

This past fall I attended the third Lausanne conference held in Cape Town, South Africa. There were over 4000 delegates there and it was the most diverse Christian meeting in history. It was very humbling to listen and observe the various testimonies of things happening through God’s people around the globe. The Congress gave a global platform to shine light on what would normally be hidden from our view…regular people being used by God to bring his grace to their worlds. These unamed and unknown people, are known by God, but off the radar of a globalized, internet, digital world. Only eternity will reveal what they have suffered and done for his glory.

Sometime I get introduced at functions and I understand that people are trying to be kind and give honor, but I honestly wonder who in the world it is that they are talking about because it is certainly not me. Then I come to an event like this and see real heros and heroines of the faith, who have risked their life for the Lord Jesus and done great exploits by faith…it makes me feel awkward, humble, and small.

Maybe one thing that I can do is constantly seek for opportunities to bring to light the courage and faith of others who would remain unknown to us in the west.

The other day I was reading a missions piece that recommended a link to a blog by a person who has traveled to 50 countries doing mission. Besides the fact that the blog site itself was really designed to play to the fears of a western comfort oriented audience (being held at gunpoint, illness, dangerous travel and so forth), the whole idea intrigued me that the activities of this person were being framed not only as “mission” but were being held up as exemplary. My interest here is not to make a value judgment on the person’s work, since there is not enough information to do so, but rather to examine the premises behind this being a form of mission.

The frame that can be constructed from the information given is someone who lives in the United States, and forays out from there to various countries at the direction of the Spirit, connecting with people-apparently Christians who have enough English to get them involved in these various adventures for varying lengths of time, and then a return home to get on a circuit to talk about what they have done, as well as blog about it.

To me this is a great recipe for fascinating travelogues and action adventure stories, but in terms of being the vessel for accomplishing Kingdom work, I find it an extremely limited model. Again, I am not asserting that some or all of this activity is not directed by the Holy Spirit, rather that it is activity with massive inherent limitations for doing mission on the terms that we would find in the New Testament. I am going to expand on a few of these areas of limitation.

1. Language. Anyone who has lived somewhere where they have been forced to learn another language to communicate and survive knows that what you are able to do is phenomenally limited by this factor.
2. The need for someone to precede them. What follows then is that without language you are relying on other people, in which case it is probably Christian people, meaning again that you are in a place where the church exists. By definition then you are not going to be able to do meaningful work in a place where the church does not exist since there is no supportive infrastructure since you don’t have language.
3. Church to Church sharing where we cross geographic and cultural boundaries is a good thing, particularly if guided by the Spirit to meet needs and build one another up. The problem is that when we call this kind of endeavor “mission” we cut out the apostolic dimension of going where the church does not exist. Winter’s E and P scales illustrate clearly the inherent duplication of effort when we go to places the church exists and highlights the need for going to those who don’t have existing church movements.
4. Naive interventions. When we don’t understand language and culture, we see the problems that people have and interpret them through our frameworks. The tendency is to create western driven and financed interventions that do more to massage the feelings of donors than actually bring about kingdom values on the ground.
5. Depth of relationship. Again, anyone who has learned a language and culture knows that it takes time to gain trust in order to have some kind of influence on converts and local believers. Stepping in and stepping out does not allow for that kind of interaction.

This would be much more palatable to me if it were framed as some kind of “ministry” to the body of Christ, without hijacking the term “mission”. The notion that something is mission just because a geographic boundary is crossed is so solidly implanted in people’s minds that it is easier to “sell” and “promote” what you are doing by drawing on that term. But in doing so it reinforces misunderstanding and models something that at the end of the day does not move us forward in making disciples of all the tribes and tongues of this world.

Recently I read through Miller and Yamamori’s book “Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement”. It was very encouraging on several levels.  Miller is a sociologist interested in religion and has been studying Pentecostalism. Together with Yamamori (of Food for the Hungry) they decided to investigate the churches in the world that are both fastest growing and the most active in social concern.

What they discovered is that the the vast majority of churches that fit such criteria are part of the Pentecostal/Charismatic stream of Christianity. They developed a term to describe these socially concerned Pentecostals–Progressive Pentecostals. They not only reach and disciple people, but they are also involved in their social settings caring for the poor.

First of all, I was encouraged to realize that we are a part of this global stream, of people who believe in the empowerment of the Spirit to proclaim the good news and who take the social realities of the people they work with seriously. It was wonderful to hear reports of this happening all over the world.

Second, it was stirring to read the testimonies of people from an amazing variety of backgrounds who were asked by the Spirit to focus their efforts on the poor, marginalized, and broken.

One of the points that I think has great implications missiologically was their description of four orientations inside of the Pentecostal/Charismatic orbit. So within their categorization system of the Pentecostal/Charismatic world (they have 5 different types, and other scholars have their own systems as it is notoriously difficult to try and make clear distinctions on such a large and diverse movement) they see these orientations cutting across categories, denominations, and organizations.

Interestingly, three of the four types do not have much to offer the world at large. These include the legalistic/otherworldly types who separate themselves off from the world, the prosperity, health and wealth folks whose main focus is themselves, and routinized Pentecostals who are Pentecostal in name and by tradition but not in practice.

We cannot assume that “being baptized in the Spirit” and things like speaking in tongues will automatically lead to a focus on the mission of God and obedience to the Great Commission. Their research confirms what a lot of people have felt…that it is quite possible to keep the Pentecostal label and get very sidetracked from God’s purposes.

This highlights for me the need for confession of sin and repentance. As Pentecostals it is easy to get caught up in the cheering at all of the successes over the past 100 years and to forget to have time before the Lord in searching our hearts and our churches and organizations to see if we have allowed other things to get between us and the Lord of the Harvest.

Recently I have been reading a couple of pieces by N.T. Wright and have found him to be wonderfully thought provoking in many directions. His work on Jesus and Paul has given a more panoramic view of the kinds of themes and issues that were part of their first century world and that shaped their ministry and writing.

I came across a wonderful quote about what it means to follow the crucified Messiah. One of the expansion points in my own understanding of my faith has been seeing how much broader salvation is than in the way I originally conceived of it. We experience coming to know Christ as our own wonderful personal salvation-”I” am saved and delivered from sin. All of that is gloriously true. But if we continue on in our faith and take the Scripture on its own terms, it becomes clear that we cannot just sign up for Jesus as some kind of personal talisman for blessing, but that we have to take on his plan and mission as well.

I like the way Ralph Winter put it: he said it is not so much about getting people into heaven as it is about getting heaven into people. Meaning it is more than just personal salvation but is about having God’s rule change our hearts so that we become the instruments of his kingdom rule. This makes Christ Lord of all and wipes out the secular/sacred divide that we fall into so easily in the west.
Here is how Wright expressed it:
“When we speak of ‘following Christ,’ it is the crucified Messiah we are talking about. His death was not simply the messy bit that enables our sins to be forgiven but that can then be forgotten. The cross is the surest, truest, deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God;…and when therefore we speak…of shaping our world, we cannot-we dare not-simply treat the cross as the thing that saves us ‘personally,’ but which can be left behind when we get on with the job. The task of shaping our world  is best understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world and in that task the methods, as well as the message, must be cross-shaped through and through.” (The Challenge of Jesus, 94-95).

This captures beautifully the centrality of the cross as God’s methodology that has to be reflected in all we do. It becomes so easy for us to reflect instead in our efforts the values of the world system of power and human arrogance. So wherever you find yourself, in whatever arena God has placed you in, we have a part in God’s redemptive task to bring the victory of the cross to bear on human brokenness.

What fascinates me is that whether explicitly as in the Evangelical position where you intentionally place the bulk of your workers in the most receptive areas, or implicitly in the Pentecostal view in that you go where the Spirit is working, what you end up with is a kind of blank spot for what to do with the places that are not currently receptive/responsive. Going to the responsive/where the Spirit is working in terms of a mission principle is wise, as long as there is an important qualification that is made very clear. The qualification is simply this: we need to pour resources and personnel into receptive/responsive peoples who have few believers and church movements. Once you take away the controls provided by that qualification, mission stops being taking Christ to where he is not known and becomes church renewal or cross-cultural workers helping or doing evangelism that can or should be done by local Christians. And this is precisely where the problem lies today. Without the qualification this general principle can actually move us in a direction away from taking the Gospel to those who have the least access.

This issue highlights the need for what I call a theology of the hard work. Two things make this missiological oversight much clearer than perhaps at any other time in the history of Christian mission. The first is the massive success of the Christian mission around the world, and the second is the increasingly clear data about all the places where the church does not yet exist. There is a clearer line than ever between work that is fraternal in nature, assisting already strong church movements to develop, and that which is pioneer in nature where the first generation of believers needs to be won and the first church movements planted. In such a condition the principle of receptivity/responsiveness without the qualification of going to the least reached will nearly always result in workers being placed where the church exists rather than where it does not exist. An unintended consequence of the receptivity principle and the Western passion for tangibility and quantification has shaped a view of mission that makes results the primary evaluative tool for determining success. The downside of this is that anything that does not produce results is avoided, and many important activities that are preparatory to harvest are neglected. This value system then is transmitted from the West into the newer emerging missions, making the criterion of successful mission numerical results alone and discouraging any activity that does not meet that standard.

I believe that a critical component that we are going to need to develop in terms of our theology of missions if we are going to seriously engage the unreached world is our stance toward non-responsive, historically slow to respond groups. I call this a theology of the hard work. Without it we are doomed to neglecting the foundational tasks of clearing the fields, preparing the ground, and planting the seed needed for harvest. In the remainder of this section I will sketch out briefly the outline of a theology of the hard work.

The idea of a theology of the hard work came to me one day as I was reading through John 4. I have always been very moved by 4:34 where Jesus says his meat is to do the Father’s will and finish His task. But on this particular day as I read further a statement jumped off the page and gripped me. In 4:35-38 as Jesus is talking to his disciples about the present harvest, he makes the statement that others have done the hard work (vs. 38), and they are now reaping the fruits of those labors. When I went back and worked through commentaries on this passage, I discovered that scholars are not really sure of the antecedents that Jesus is using here. Who are the “others”, what harvest Jesus is talking about, where did he send them to reap, who are the reapers drawing their wages, and so on. What is quite clear however, is that Jesus is acknowledging here the well known agricultural fact that in order to get a harvest you must do hard preparatory work first. It encouraged me greatly that Jesus recognizes and honors the hard work. He notes that both the sower and the reaper rejoice together (vs. 36). I have always appreciated the urgent eschatological view of our Pentecostal forefathers and mothers, but living among a slow response Buddhist people it has bothered me at the same time because such a view, without intending to do so, tended to devaluate the preparatory hard work where the ground is still hard. I was excited to find out that Jesus is not only aware of the need for hard work to be done but he applauds it.

A theology of the hard work is founded on Jesus’ acknowledgement of the role of hard work in preparing for a harvest. He lets his disciples know that they are standing on the shoulders of others; that those who have gone before have done the really difficult labor and now they will reap. Today, in the excitement of the worldwide expansion of the church there is a diminished tolerance for the often backbreaking labor of preparation for a harvest. I found a quote in an essay on mission societies citing a letter from an Irish missionary to Iran requesting prayer for the slow progress of the gospel in then Persia. He said, “I am not reaping the harvest; I can scarcely claim to be sowing the seed; I am hardly plowing the soul; but I am gathering out the stones. That, too, is missionary work; let it be supported by loving sympathy and fervent prayer.”[1] The wonderful harvest today among Iranians did not grow out of a vacuum, there was preparation. We need to revive the perspective of heaven in order to instill steel into the souls of the workers that will go to places that require preparation before a harvest will be gained

Another factor in a theology of the hard work is one that comes from empirical observation, that the non-responsive may be so not because they are resistant to the Gospel, but because they have never heard the message in a way that makes sense to them. We are hearing a growing number of reports from many places, with some being in what are regarded as highly resistant blocs of people, where peoples that had never responded in the past are coming to faith in Jesus in large numbers. This is often associated with a presentation of the message of Christ that is disconnected from Western forms and which helps converts remain in their sociocultural context while faithfully following Jesus. Resistance and non-responsiveness often turn out to be not the problem of the people group, but rather the messengers and the version of faith they are trying to proclaim. If our strategy does not include a missiology that legitimizes going to groups with the smallest response and fewest Christians we are making a large strategic error, potentially cutting off those who would respond to a message put in their context.

A theology of the hard work revives a theme that is prominent in the Gospels that we will be hated for Jesus’ sake (see for example Matt. 5:10; 10:21-25; 24:9). With the huge expansion of the Christian movement around the globe it is easy to forget how divisive Jesus can be in certain social settings. We need to hear his call to his followers to endure and hold firm when they are hated, reviled, and persecuted for their identification with him. Finally, I think there is more theological work to do in the area of understanding the spread of God’s glory among the nations at a larger level than just the salvation of individuals. It is right for us to long for the people that we work among to experience eternal salvation through Christ, but we also have to adjust our horizons to the larger picture and remember that the goal of missions is the glory of God. It is also right for us to pursue bringing glory to God by turning people who have been rebels, and who love darkness to his light and truth. There is no doubt that the growth of the worshipping community in all its diversity of the various tribes and tongues is a major part of bringing glory to God. Yet we have to admit that there may be more to this that remains unseen to our eyes and is not yet understood.

When I was a missionary candidate we had a speaker whose name I no longer remember, who was laboring in one of the toughest unreached blocs of people in the world. One of the statements that he made rang in my heart, giving me a brand new perspective on what it means to serve among the unreached. The gist of it was that even if no one ever is saved, it was worth it to live among the people and share the message and bring glory to God by proclaiming his grace and mercy in Christ. I think that if we are going to sustain activity among the unreached world that we need to refine this vision of the glory of God more so that workers see it as honorable, noble, and pleasing to God to spend their lives telling the story of Jesus in a place where at that given time in history there is limited response. We cannot let the good concept of church growth become some kind of idol that keeps us from spending time with the unreached because they are not immediately responsive to the preaching of the Gospel. If we lower the bar to church growth only and then neglect these major blocs of unreached people because they are not easy to win and add to our churches we may protect ourselves in the eyes of our peers, but shortchange the glory of God by not bearing witness to his saving work. I believe that a robust theology of the hard work will be used by the Holy Spirit to break through the fear of failure that is a major inhibiting factor in having individuals and mission agencies embrace such groups.

Periodically I read articles that advocate missions as a project with a short term approach. Interestingly, nobody arrived at those conclusions by an examination of the biblical text or of mission history. It is something that has been created by the intersection of technological innovation bringing growing affluence, ease of travel, and inexpensive communication with cultural change in the West. I don’t want to review the arguments in the long-term/short-debate, other than to note that I am decidedly a long-term advocate and tend to feel like something of a dinosaur in the current climate. Now there are a number of reasons why I believe that going somewhere, learning a language and cultural system, and staying a long time to make a contribution to the planting, growth and development of local church movements is important. I also believe that cross-cultural workers adept in those ways are critical to the future prospects of missions, whether they are sent from the West or majority world emerging agencies. However, rather than discuss the reasons here, I want to illustrate one of them that I have begun to experience on a frequent basis as I moved into my second and more recently third decade of service.

The other day my wife and I decided to drop in, unannounced, at a small church in the city we live in. As is often the case, the pastor came up and asked me to speak that morning, reasoning that since his people hear him all the time a change would be good. So I tend to come prepared for anything in such circumstances. One of the families that attends this small church is E*, her husband N*, and their young son. We have known E* since she was 7 years old. Her parents were the pastors we worked with in L* in our first and second terms. Our daughters grew up playing with her, and she was often in our home in those years. She is now about the same age as her mother was when we first met her. Her mom passed away in her mid-40s with cancer, and seeing E* is like seeing her all over again. I shared a message out of Acts 18 looking at the implications of how Paul evangelized and planted new communities of believers and what that might mean for us in our setting in Bangkok.

After the prayer time we sat down to talk with E* and N* and had a very interesting conversation that reminded me again of why staying a long time means so much. E* shared about how her heart was burning within her as I spoke about sharing the Gospel as Paul had, and that she felt like she needed to rekindle the flames of spiritual zeal in her own heart. She also confessed how having grown up in a Christian home she feels very inadequate and unsure of herself in how to talk with Buddhist neighbors where she lives. It was a critical conversation because in this tiny group of believers E* and N* are key people. He is a new believer and she is a second generation Christian. If they become more than just Sunday attenders, it will have a real impact on this little church. E* has never turned from her faith, but like too many of us, she has seen the underside of enough church life. The messy lives of those who profess to follow Christ have taken a big chunk out of the joy of that first love. Her mother was a high-impact Christian in a very humble and unassuming way, and if E* and N* as a family can catch that vision for living a life on purpose, it could help tilt the church in a new direction. As we drove home later that day, we talked about how unique that conversation was in terms of its transparency and openness.

It was not the kind of discussion you can have with a relative stranger, or someone who does not know the language well. It is one of the benefits and open doors that come from knowing someone when he or she was a small child, helping them get their first real job in the big city, and just being a part of their life so that at a teachable and open moment, that kind of conversation can happen. I have come to see that part of what staying a long time means is that you are strategically placed to be on the ground and ready for that unplannable, unstrategizable, miniscule window of time when a word needs to be said, comfort given, or a warning delivered, and you become God’s agent-on-the-ground to carry the message. It is precisely those least-controlled moments that so often turn out to be where spiritual leverage happens or seeds are planted in good ground that bring abundant harvest down the line, in a time horizon unseen by us.

When God wanted to speak he wrapped the message in a person; He has spoken to us by a Son the writer of Hebrews reminds us (Hebrew 1:2). God does not do drive-by evangelism, tract blitzes, canned evangelism, or disembodied verbal presentations of the Good News in easily digestible sound bites from a safe distance. He became one of us, and lived and died among us. And although we are but fuzzy shadows and blurred images of his incarnation, the chance for an imperfect vessel to be used by God for his purposes in that way, is what, by God’s grace, will keep us on the ground in another culture for the long haul.

Not long ago I finished working through Lesslie Newbiggin’s The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. He had a sentence that jumped off the page in one of his chapters dealing with the logic of mission.

He begins by noting that there has been a long tradition of seeing the mission of the Church as primarily obedience to a command. While this certainly has justification, it can seem to make the mission a burden rather than a joy.

He then argues that, “If one looks at the New Testament evidence one gets another impression. Mission begins with a kind of explosion of joy. The news that the rejected and crucified Jesus is alive is something that cannot possible be suppressed. It must be told. Who could be silent about such a fact? the mission of the Church in the pages of the New Testament is more like the fallout from a vast explosion, a radioactive fallout which is not lethal but life-giving” (116).

He also points out that the majority of the proclamations of the Gospel in the book of Acts are done in response to questions asked by those outside the Church (116). “In every case there is something present, a new reality, which calls for explanation and so prompts the question to which the preaching of the gospel is the answer” (117).

I often find myself using the terminology of “telling the story” rather than “preach” when I talk with people about evangelism because the latter term has so much baggage related to giving sermons from behind a pulpit in a church building setting. This fits well with Newbigin’s “explosion of joy” because our role is not to convert or to force anything on people, but rather to tell the story of what has happened in Jesus Christ.

The question then becomes how do we live and conduct ourselves in a way to raise questions in the minds of those who surround us? In the book of Acts these questions are primarily raised after some kind of supernatural intervention. Being present in real-life situations so that we can be the channel for God’s power to operate is critical to releasing his grace in lives and circumstances so that questions can be raised.