Missionary Anecdote

I read this account in Outgrowing the Ingrown Church. I thought it highlighted some good missiological principles that are applicable to every church and every Christian.

"Vednayakam Samuel Azariah became [the Anglican] bishop of Dornakal, the smallest diocese in the subcontinent. By the time he died at the end of World Warr II, the diocese had become the largest in all India.

What made the difference? Many things. Azariah stressed the importance of Bible knowledge being systematically imparted in all the churches. He focused on leadership training, regular evangelism, crusades after the harvests, and the use of native Indian cultural forms of worship and music. But he did something else that was supremely important. He insisted that every congregation and every church member get their [sic] identity straight. He stressed continually that each congregation was Christ's and distinct from the world . . . Often Azariah would dramatize the need for outgoing witness when he arrived in a congregation by asking every Christian in the church building to stand up and put his or her hands on their heads and say, "I am a baptized Christian. Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!"

7 Core Elements of Introversion

C. John Miller wrote Outgrowing the Ingrown Church in 1986. It is an excellent book that the Lord is using to help me in my sanctification. His basic premise is that many churches are ingrown (introverted/self-focused) because of a lack of faith in God's promises to empower for service.

He offers the following list as an aid to determining if an individual or church is spiritually introverted:

1. Tunnel Vision: the limitation of "potential ministries of the church to those that can be accomplished by the visible, human resources at hand. These possibilities are often further limited by recollections of past negative experiences and perceptions of present obstacles. At bottom, this is unbelief based on a secularized ignorance of the Spirit's power-His ability to supply us with God's goals for the church and the supernatural means to reach them" (29).

2. Elitism: This refers to the elevation and idolization of strengths in order to overshadow weaknesses, and it results in arrogant, self-satisfied, other-desparging attitudes (30)

3. Fear of Man: Although ingrown/introverted persons and ministries have a sense of superiority, they also are "likely to feel inferior and shrivel up and die at the first sign of opposition" (31).

4. Superficial Niceness: He describes this as a group commitment to avoid rocking the boat or disturbing the status quo. Miller offers the story of a mainline pastor who preached on regeneration. Midway through the sermon a woman was convicted and came forward. Shocked, he asked her what she wanted. She replied, "I need Christ so very much. Please tell me how to get this new birth." The minister ignored her, finished the sermon, took the offering, and dismissed the church. Miller finishes: "Afterward the congregation filed out without a single person, not even the pastor, coming to talk to her. What we had there was a churchly conspiracy to make God and Christ something other than what they are. Christ is not a nice, tame God who can be controlled, caged lest He intrude in unseemly ways on Sunday mornings or in other church affairs" (33).

5. Gossipy: Unwillingness to forgive as defined by the Bible

6. Confused Leadership Roles: "In the typical self-centered church there is a hidden determination to eradicate enthusiasm that disturbs the comfortable routine dictated by self-trust, self-exaltation, niceness as a defense mechanism, and the right of gossip" (35). Also, the pastor is expected to do all the work of the church.

7. Misdirected Purpose: "the controlling purpose in the ingrown church has to do with survival-not with growth through the conversion of the lost" (35-36).

Emotions Underlying Evangelistic Outreach

I was arrested recently by Paul's claim to have incredibly deep feelings for the Jews (Rom 9:1). Although I've read the passage before, the Spirit would not leave me alone about this passage. As a result of my meditation, I organized a lesson that I taught twice this past weekend. I left the last 10-15 minutes open for discussion that really helped me along in my thinking. The result of my meditation and the contributions of the classes I taught are below:

I. Paul's emotional response to lost Jews

A. Paul's claim is really pretty remarkable. He claims that he felt great sorrow or heaviness such as the sorrow one might feel when he learns that a close friend is moving far away (Jn 16.6), when a woman approaches labor (Jn 16.21), when a person is excluded from a community he desires to be included in (2 Cor 2:7), and when a person learns of the death of a loved one (Philippians 2:27). As I meditated on this claim, I realized how appropriate the KJV's "heaviness" is as a translation. Paul is saying that he has a great big cloud hanging over him. And that cloud is an emotional pain. Paul also claims that he is continually feeling agony emotionally. The same word is used in Luke 16 to describe the pain of the wealthy man who woke up in hell. So, to summarize, Paul has a continual sense of emotional pain and agony over the lost state of the Jews.

B. Paul recognizes that this claim is difficult to believe. That is why he starts off with a three-fold affirmation of the truthfulness of his claims. He says that he speaks the truth in Christ, he is not lying, and the Holy Spirit actually bears witness with his conscience. So I am left with no choice but to believe that Paul is describing his actual feeling.

C. Paul spells out what kind of attitude grows out of this deep feeling of sorrow and agony: self-sacrifice. And not just the desire to lose sleep and undergo discomfort for the sake of the lost. Paul actually has the attitude that he is willing to forego the bliss of eternity with God so that the Jews could enjoy that bliss.

II. Paul's lifestyle backs up his claims with a life of sacrifice.

To some extent, I am a product of the enlightenment. So I tend to be skeptical. I can just imagine that if I claimed to feel this type of deep sorrow and continual emotional pain for a people, some would say "prove it." So I looked in Acts to see if Paul's lifestyle matched his claims. This is what I found:

Passage	Activity	Result
Acts 9:20, 23	Proclaimed in the synagogues in Damascus	Plot to kill him; he escapes to Jerusalem
Acts 9:29	Preached, disputed with Greek speaking Jews in Jerusalem	Plot to kill him; he escapes to Tarsus
Acts 13:5	Preached in synagogue in Salamis
Acts 13:14, 45, 50	Spoke in synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia	Contradicted, reviled, persecuted, driven away
Acts 14:1, 2, 5	Spoke in synagogue in Iconium	Stirred up and poisoned Gentiles, attempt to mistreat and stone
Acts 14:19	In Lystra	Stoned Paul to pt of death
Acts 16:3	Circumcised Timothy for Jews’ sake
Acts 16:13	Preached on Sabbath in Philippi	Attacked and imprisoned
Acts 17:1-3, 5	Reasoned in synagogue in Thessalonica	Jealousy; mob, riot, attack
Acts 17:10, 13	Gave word in synagogue in Berea	Agitation and riot
Acts 17:17	Reasoned in synagogue in Athens
Acts 18:4, 6, 9-10, 12	Reasoned in synagogue in Corinth	Opposed, reviled, threatened, sued
Acts 18:19	Reasoned in synagogue in Ephesus
Acts 19:8-9	Reasoned in synagogue in Ephesus	Spoke evil of the way
Acts 20:3		Plot made by Jews in Greece
Acts 21:26, 30-32	Paul purifies self and pays for other’s vows for Jew’s sake	Seized, dragged, almost killed, beaten
Acts 23:1, 10	Spoke to council of Jewish leaders	Violence that threatened to tear Paul apart
Acts 28:17, 23	Calls together local leaders of Jews in Rome teaching morning till night	Some believed and some did not.

When I look at these passages, I see that I cannot gainsay what Paul claimed. I mean, how many times do you have to get beaten and driven away by the Jews before you think, "Perhaps this isn't the best method?" What made him go back again and again? It was his love for the Jews. It was this deep, emotional, sorrow and pain he felt for the Jews.

As I look at this passage and think it through, I see three concrete aspects of Paul's life that grow out of his feelings:

1. Prayer. His feelings provoked him to pray (Rom 10:1).

2. Proactive evangelism. The chart above shows that Paul pursued the Jews. When he arrived in a town, he sought out the synagogue. He did not have a GPS or the yellow pages. He had to find them. In Acts 16, we read that he found the Jews and God-fearers praying at the river on the Sabbath. How did he know they would be there? He found out where the Jews met, joined them, and spoke up about the gospel.

3. Persistence in the face of rejection. Paul never stopped going after the Jews. Even after we've read of time after time of Paul's being kicked out, reviled, beaten, and even stoned, we find that Paul's first act after arriving in Rome is to call the local Jewish leaders to him to reason with them from morning to evening for the gospel's sake. Real sorrow of heart grows into persistence.

III. Application

I am forced to confess that my life does not match up with Paul's. I am likewise forced to admit that my emotions do not either. Why not? The following reasons are the ones that I and others thought of:

1. Self-focus: all I care about is what is going on with me, my family, my church, etc.

2. Self-righteousness: I am actually irritated and frustrated by the ungodly because I think so highly of myself

3. Self-dependence: Paul's tenacity and persistence grew out of his dependence upon God. In my experience, it takes only a few rejections (pretty mild when compared to Paul's) to make me timid.

4. Isolation from the lost. This can be physical isolation that grows out of spending all of our discretionary time with other believers, all of our discretionary time as a family, etc.

5. Thoughtlessness. These deep emotions aren't the result of five minutes of meditation and prayer. They grow out of prolonged, regular meditation on truth.

On the Sinful Church

I've been reading The Jesus I Never Knew by Yancey at night before I fall asleep. I thought this section was helpful for how to think about the visible church that is so sinful.

"I could fill several pages with such colorful quotations [about the church's failings], all of which underscore the risk involved in entrusting God's own reputation to the likes of us. Unlike Jesus, we do not perfectly express the Word. We speak in garbled syntax, stuttering, mixing languages together, putting accent marks in wrong places. When the world looks for Christ it sees, like the cave-dwellers in Plato's allegory, only shadows created by the light, not the light itself.

"Why don't we look more like the church Jesus described? Why does the body of Christ so faintly resemble him? If Jesus could foresee such disasters as the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Christian slave trade, apartheid, why did he ascend in the first place?

"I cannot provide a confident answer to such questions, for I am part of the problem. Examined closely, my query takes on a distressingly personal cast: Why do I so poorly resemble him?" (234).

Gracious Rewards

This past weekend I taught SS on the topic "For the sake of his name." My outline was:

1. What is the meaning of "for the sake of his name"? (answer = advance Christ's interests)

2. How does missions advance the interests of Christ?

3. What might it cost to advance the interests of Christ?

4. What are the rewards for advancing the interests of Christ?

This last point is a contested point, but I think we glorify the Lord when we believe what he says. So I take these remarkable promises at face value:

1. Matthew 19:29: "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or fathers or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life" (ESV).

2. Luke 18:29-30: "And he said to them, 'Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eternal life" (ESV).

The promise for multiplied returns in the present is what staggers me. Does emphasizing these promises produce mercenaries? I don't think it has to. I italicized two phrases in the verses above because I believe they provide the necessary guards against pushing a self-centered message of rewards. Jesus simply says that he will take care of the interests of those who seek his interests above their own. So, for people who pass up on the opportunity to own a home, live close to family and friends, seek a retirement etc., Jesus promises to make sure they have multiple homes to live in, family members wherever they are, etc.

In our own experience (not that we've given up much really), we've found that we have houses to live in in multiple states. All we have to do is call and people open their homes to us for the Lord's sake. By the Lord's grace we have people who are as dear as brothers, sisters, parents, and grandparents all over the Eastern US. (Just this past weekend Viviane referred to a man in the church we were visiting as her grandfather.) Because of the Lord they have welcomed us into their families. We would have missed this incredible joy if we ignored the Lord's leading in our life to forsake owning a house of our own and living near family and friends. Have we earned or merited this favor? No. Whatever little we have left for the Lord has not been left in perfect obedience. We've had our fair share of self-centered pity parties. My conclusion is that the Lord has show himself gracious to us. We are experiencing his promise of rewards as a grace.

Thank God for such a gracious, loving Lord.

March/April 2010 Update Letter

Down in Sumter

We thank the Lord for the time he gave us in Sumter, SC with Sumter Bible Church. We had a good visit with the church. The Lord gave Michael multiple opportunities to speak: SS, Sunday AM and PM services, and the junior/senior Bible class at Sumter Christian School.

We enjoyed making new friends. Viviane especially enjoyed Pastor Davis. They got along splendidly as you can see.

On Monday we decided to swing by Swan Lake in Sumter before we drove home. The Lord gave us a beautiful day and we were very impressed by the park. We are grateful for a Lord who can create and sustain such a variety of beautiful creatures and plants. We are more grateful that such a Lord condescends to be our Savior.

Weekend Tennessee

We spent a profitable few days in Tennessee at the end of February and beginning of March. We are grateful for the hospitality of our friends at Trinity Baptist Church in Franklin, TN. We enjoyed a morning service with them and then lunch with Pastor David Schindel, his family, and the Dale Baker family. We also enjoyed catching up with some one of Michael's former apartment mates, James Barnard, and his family.

That Sunday evening we drove north to present the mission to Charity Baptist Church in Joelton, TN. We had a good time with the church, making new friends and catching up with old ones. Sam and Dana Gage showed us Christian hospitality. We also enjoyed catching up with David and Jill King, friends from Charlotte, NC. Michael was also surprised to see Gary Wingert and his family as well. Gary and Michael were in the same society while at Bob Jones.

The Lord also gave Michael the opportunity to speak to the students of Jonathan Edwards Classical Academy on Wednesday morning and to the Awana group at Charity on Wednesday night. We enjoyed the time we spent with these believers and look forward to times in the future when we can fellowship again.