Thy Kingdom Go

"Most Christians glibly recite “Thy kingdom come,” but this means almost nothing until and unless they also say “My kingdom go.”

~ Richard Rohr

Missionaries to be Example to Nationals

This is a quote from over 30 years ago. Insightful!

“As missionaries we need to set the example and pace for the national churches and pastors. Our responsibility is to keep moving out to the cutting edge of the work. As new churches are planted, we will continue to break new ground rather than limit our efforts to organizing and training.”

Joseph S. McCullough, Our First Priority”, The Andean Outlook (Plainfield N.J.), Fall, 1971, p7

Plant Churches or Missionaries? Which Comes First?

Which comes first? The more people live the missional life, the more churches will be planted.

"The goal of our missional life is not to grow churches. The goal of the church is to grow missionaries."

(Tangible Kingdom. Hugh Halter, pg 168 2008, Jossey-Bass)

Simple Ways to Show Love to Muslims!

"Show sympathy in times of illness or bereavement. Perform little acts of service. Invite them to your house and accept invitations to theirs. Be scrupulously honest in all business dealings. Show that you are a Christian in the smallest details of life. If a Muslim shopkeeper has given you the wrong change, be sure to point this out to him or her. Be respectful and show honor where honor is due. Demonstrate that you love Muslims by trying to understand their point of view. Be a good listener."

("Sharing Our Faith With Muslims. Charles R. Marsh. Chapter 8 in "Encountering The World of Islam" Authenic books Atlanta 2005)

Tears Of Lady Christian Missionary Converted A Muslim!

"Si Mebarek was a young Qur’anic student who taught the boys in the mosque to recite their holy book. For many years he had attended Sunday school classes, but the teaching had left no impression on him. He hardened his heart to the gospel and mocked his teachers. When he was eighteen and very proud of his knowledge of Islam, he went to the home of a woman missionary and asked for a gospel in Arabic, saying he would very much like to read it again. The servant of God was thrilled. Here was an answer to her prayers: a young man seeking the Lord. Si Mebarek took the gospel in his hand, glanced at it, and then, with a look of defiance, tore it to shreds and threw it on the ground, trampling on the pieces. He quite expected to receive a sharp reproof for having treated the Word of God thus. Instead he saw tears come into the eyes of the servant of God. With a look of inexpressible sadness, but of genuine love, she turned away without a word, going into the house to pray for him.

Si Mebarek headed for home, but that expression of the patient love of Christ, of his meekness and gentleness, really reached his heart. Within an hour, he was back again, now a convicted sinner seeking salvation. That simple expression of the love of the One who wept over Jerusalem achieved what the years of teaching had failed to accomplish."

("Sharing Our Faith With Muslims. Charles R. Marsh. Chapter 8 in "Encountering The World of Islam" Authenic books Atlanta 2005)

Relationships Over Mission Programs - Relationships as our Program!

"....Westerners struggle with relationships. They may get so involved in programs, technical projects, and social ministries that they have little time for friends and neighbors. Our western culture is often relationship- deficient, and the western Christian can take this deficiency with him to the field.

Once the Christian worker begins his ministry he usually thinks in terms of weekly studies, weekly discipleship meetings, and weekly teaching sessions. The thought of meeting daily or twice day with a new contact or convert does not usually enter his mind. If he is to take on the role of a religious teacher, he must remember that the Muslim students he has want to develop relationship with him as a religious teacher, and not simply sit in on a series of lectures. Students may sit quietly for a couple of lessons, but if no relationship is forthcoming, they will seldom want to continue."

("Contextualization and Community. Roland Muller. in Encounter the World OF Islam, Lesson 7 extra Readings online to text.)

Contextualizing Your T Shirt , Sandals, Short Skirts & Bare Arms in Muslim Contexts

"The most important part of contextualization is to present ourselves in such away that our lifestyles demonstrate, and even enhance, the message we want to communicate. If a single woman says she has been set free from sin but dresses and acts as would a prostitute in the target culture, no one will believe her message. If a man says he is a teacher but dresses in shorts, t-shirt, and sandals as if he were a useless young man on the streets, no one will believe he holds such an honored position."

("Contextualization and Community. Roland Muller. in Encounter the World OF Islam, Lesson 7 extra Readings online to text.)

How Open & Honest is Your Missionary Journey?

(If You are Familiar with EMQ You Must realize Gary is not bashing Missionaries and Agencies.) But Gary is asking a valid Question. How honest are we about the challenges of mission, not just the successes?

Why we must be honest- if all people here is glowing success and none of the challenges they begin to question every missionary about their apparent lack of success. Certainly, in rare cases an odd missionary is simply not working hard, or refuse to look at some wise strategy change that might possibly help them. However, what about people working in limited access countries, where it takes years to build a church? Churches measure Pioneer missionaries against the success of regular missionaries who are working with a high percentage of Christian people with many existing churches of all stripes to work with and through.

Just a personal note. My experience with a "Rayner Rambler" private email that went to the over one hundred of the keenest of interested people within churches was a smashing success. Discussing ups, downs, discouragements, church struggles, raw form the village each week.
Those ramblers were the most commented on news, far out stripping glossy newsletters and printed materials. The 20-35 group is looking for real heart and life news about what is involved in the "Journey", not only wanting to hear about the end result, after the fact.

"I almost cringe when I hear of groups launching new marketing plans, expanding public relations departments, or engaging in “branding” exercises, While each of these may have its place, these and similar activities are also breeding grounds for the professionalization of falsehood. Whatever happened to just being ourselves and being faithful to our values?.....IF that is all the Lord requires of us, why is the massaging and packaging of truth necessary for others?

But these are not the only places where shaded truth emerges in the mission enterprise. It exists all the way from rank-and-file missionary prayer letters to the most articulately argued missiology. It’s too discouraging to our donors, we surmise, to burden them with the real struggles we may be facing. Things like loneliness, uncertainty about what to do next, and feelings of depression are not the stuff of missionary heroes, Besides, our partners support us in order to see certain things accomplished, and they want to hear how that’s happening, not the hindrances we’re dealing with. This is particularly so, we conclude, when those hindrances may reflect personal or professional inadequacy on our part. But in doing so, are we not declaring how unimportant we really think prayer is?

(A Second Look: The Audacity of Hype and Humility. Gary Corwin Editor EMQ. EMQ January 2009 Vol 45, No 1 pp6-7)

No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets - William Borden

William Whiting Borden - missionary to the Muslims of China, but died of spinal meningitis in Egypt during his training there at the age of 25. Samuel Zwemer conducted his funeral.

"In 1904 William Borden graduated from a Chicago high school. As heir to the Borden family fortune, he was already wealthy. For his high school graduation present, his parents gave 16-year-old Borden a trip around the world. As the young man traveled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, he felt a growing burden for the world's hurting people. Finally, Bill Borden wrote home about his "desire to be a missionary."

One friend expressed disbelief that Bill was "throwing himself away as a missionary."In response, Borden wrote two words in the back of his Bible: "No reserves."

Yale University in 1905 One of them wrote: "He came to college far ahead, spiritually, of any of us. He had already given his heart in full surrender to Christ and had really done it. We who were his classmates learned to lean on him and find in him a strength that was solid as a rock, just because of this settled purpose and consecration.

During his college years, Bill Borden made an entry in his personal journal that defined what his classmates were seeing in him. That entry said simply: "Say 'no' to self and 'yes' to Jesus every time."

Borden's first disappointment at Yale came when the university president spoke in a convocation about the students' need of "having a fixed purpose." After that speech, Borden wrote: "He neglected to say what our purpose should be, and where we should get the ability to persevere and the strength to resist temptations."4 Surveying the Yale faculty and much of the student body, Borden lamented what he saw as the end result of an empty, humanistic philosophy: moral weakness and sin-ruined lives.

During his first semester at Yale, Borden started A scripture & Prayer meeting with himself and one other, it grew to three. By the end of his first year, 150 freshman were meeting weekly for Bible study and prayer. By the time Bill Borden was a senior, one thousand of Yale's 1,300 students were meeting in such groups. Borden's outreach ministry was not confined to the Yale campus. He cared about widows and orphans and the disabled. He rescued drunks from the streets of New Haven.

Borden's missionary call narrowed to the Muslim Kansu people in China. Once he fixed his eyes on that goal, Borden never wavered.

Upon graduation from Yale, Borden turned down some high-paying job offers. In his Bible, he wrote two more words: "No retreats."

William Borden went on to do graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When he finished his studies at Princeton, he sailed for China. Because he was hoping to work with Muslims, he stopped first in Egypt to study Arabic. While there, he contracted spinal meningitis. Within a month, 25-year-old William Borden was dead.

Was Borden's untimely death a waste? Not in God's perspective. Prior to his death, Borden had written two more words in his Bible. Underneath the words "No reserves" and "No retreats," he had written: "No regrets."

Link: http://home.snu.edu/~HCULBERT/regret.htm

Reachable! Bible Translation & Language Learning Pays

The Taliabo Story!

Why Complicate Church Planting? Just tell the story!

".... the oldest man in the room, about 70 years old, spoke up: `We planted 40 churches this past year.'
That blew me away! I crossed the room and sat at his feet. ~Brother, I need to learn from you. Teach me about church planting.'
He looked puzzled an replied, `It's not hard. Every morning my great niece reads to me from the bible for one hour - I can't read so she reads for me. Then I think about what she read until lunch. I think about what it means and what God wants our family to do. When everyone comes in from the field for lunch, I tell them what God said through His Word to our family. Then I tell them to tell everyone they know what God said to out family that day. And they do. That's all.'" (Bhojpuri man from North India)

(" A Movement of God Among the Bhojpuro" David L Watson & Paul Watson. Perspectives on the World christian Movement. William Carey library, Ralph D winter, 2009, pg 699)

How Should Missionaries Choose Their Standard of Living?

"Adapting oneself to a new culture and worldview is never easy, and it does not happen automatically. Due to globalization, in many large cities of the world missionaries have the option of living in a quasi-Western bubble. They shop in Western-styled grocery stores, wear up-to-date Western fashions, maybe even take their kids to McDonalds on a regular basis.
The unpleasant truth is missionaries who uncritically follow this kind of lifestyle are unlikely to become bi-cultural.
However, rather than picking on the obvious extreme cases, this should serve as a reminder to all of us that we need to stop letting transnational corporations dictate our behavior. A missionary’s choice of lifestyle is just that—a choice—and one that we should be much more deliberate about since it sets the tone for much of what goes on in the rest of our ministry. I am not asserting it is morally wrong for missionaries to live a thoroughly Western lifestyle in the Majority World—this is not my call to make. But I am saying that such a choice can be massively harmful to the cause of Christ because it distorts the meaning of the gospel."

("Decoupling Missionary Advance From Western Culture",Gene Daniels, EMQ OCT 2009, pg422)

How Missionaries Dress is a Critical Choice!

I have been there as a former minister. You get to the mission field and are so delighted to be free from wear a suit and tie. However, there are often the equivalents in new cultures. More than that, there categories of deficiency we need to learn in the host culture. Like it or not we must adapt. Here is a great illustration

"I know a hard-working missionary who had some success in winning young college men to Christ in a small Muslim city. He is well aware of the need to apply biblical insight and sound theology to his goal of developing local leadership for the church he is planting. However, he seems completely unaware of the strange spectacle he makes of himself as he bicycles around this same town in a helmet and bright-colored spandex bike-wear. Furthermore, the sight of his mountain bike and culturally inappropriate clothing is just one facet of his lifestyle that screams of contemporary Western culture. Despite several years on the field, he seems completely unaware that his behavior is providing his Muslim neighbors with irrefutable evidence that the gospel and “offensive Western culture’ are one and the same. The real problem is not his choice of attire, but that he is unintentionally confirming the warning repeated in mosques across Central Asia that Christianity represents a horrible clash of cultures and must be avoided at all costs."
("Decoupling Missionary Advance From Western Culture",Gene Daniels, EMQ OCT 2009, pg422)

Testimony Steve Saint End of The Spear

Testimony Steve Saint End of The Spear (Get some tissue!)

Avoiding Dependancy Good Example!

Avoiding Dependency (Example of Waodani - Beyond The Gates of Splendor)

Can we Pray or Sing "God Bless ........" All Nations?

"We in the west still struggle with cultural superiority. We are indoctrinated to believe that living in America is the best possible option. We are told that this nations is (or was) a God-fearing nation and that is why we sing, `God Bless America' but do we think or pray or sing, `God Bless China" or India or Saudi Arabia? This can make adjustment to another place difficult"

(In Pursuit of Effective Models of Mission". Greg H Parsons, Missions Frontiers, Sept-Oct 2009 pg49)

"Sink" Yourself for God overseas? "Staying Power" ?

"Are we becoming short of missionary perseverance today? By all means let us acknowledge the value of short-term missionary assignments and see the divine purpose in many of them. But where are those who are ready to `sink' themselves for God overseas? Under the Lord's direction, let us look full in the face at such problems as missionary children's education and changing missionary strategy; but if men are to be won, believers truly nourished, and churches encouraged into the fullness of life in Christ, a great deal of `missionary staying power' of the right sort is going to be needed."

(Europe's Moravians. Colin Grant. Perspectives 4th edition, 2009, Ralph Winter, William Carey Library. pg293)

Becoming a Missionary Doesn't Make One a Hero -Just Obedient?

" A.C. Thompson, one of the main 19th century recorders of the early history of the Moravian missions, wrote:

• `So fully is the duty of evangelizing the heathen lodged in current thought that the fact of anyone entering personally upon that work never creates surprise...It is not regarded as a thing that calls for widespread heralding, as if something marvelous or even unusual were in hand.'

...Rev, Ignatius Latrobe, a former secretary of the Moravian missions in the United Kingdom during the 19th century, wrote:

• `We think it is a great mistake when, after their appointment, missionaries are held up to public notice and admiration and much praise is bestowed upon their devotedness to their Lord, presenting them to the congregations as martyrs and confessors before they have even entered upon their labours, We rather advise them quietly to set out, recommended to the fervent prayers of the congregation....'

No Clamor, no platform heroics, no publicity, but rather an ardent, unostentatious desire to make Christ known wherever his name had not been named."

(Europe's Moravians. Colin Grant. Perspectives 4th edition, 2009, Ralph Winter, William Carey Library. pg292

Which country has the most efficient missionary-sending church?

"One might guess Korea (16,000), the Philippines or Norway...But the surprising fact is that Mongolia tops the list as the most efficient missionary sending country. One out of every 222 Mongolian believers serves with a mission organization. In fact, of the entire global Protestant community, the most efficient missionary-sending countries are not wealthy ones....If Mongolia can send one missionary for every 222 believers, other countries are without excuse."

("The state of the Gospel" Jason Mandryk, 2006 speech -Perspectives, 4th ed 2009 Winter, William Carey Library, pg 365)