Accepted!

Today I received word that I am accepted into the next Reformation Project cohort. It felt so good–too good. I am so excited and so happy! This means I have to start going to church and reading a ton of material, but I am so ready to get going on this. So I will begin attending our family’s local Baptist church this Sunday.

I owe a huge thank you to those who sent in recommendation letters for me! Thank you so much for believing in me regardless of our doctrinal differences. This makes three cohorts in a row for me. I really enjoy this cohort style of learning and growing in faith.

Vantage Point 3 Cohort

In 2013 I attended Grace Community’s leadership cohort in Detroit, MI. This utilized the Vantage Point 3 “The Journey” material and was excellent. I had a personal encounter with the Triune God and found my authentic self narrative. Here is  a link to the program my wife and I participated in:  http://vantagepoint3.org/our-processes/the-journey/

ACT3 Cohort

In 2014 I attended John Armstrong’s ACT3 Cohort in Chicago, IL. This was an amazing learning experience, and one that changed me forever. I gained respect for theology and connected more with historic, orthodox Christianity. The reading material was very good and deeply impacted all of my own book writing. This cohort inspired me to be an author. It was so exciting to spend time with the likes of John and his friends such as George Koch. I loved speaking with James Danaher as well. I learned that accepting a person is not the same as accepting their doctrine. There is much value in relational unity and staying in the conversation. Here is a link to the ACT3 program:  http://www.act3network.com/cohorts/

Reformation Leadership Cohort

In 2015 I will be attending the Reformation Project cohort in Washington DC. I have already made new contacts and new friends through the application process. I am really excited about the next 4 months, culminating in a four day conference in our nation’s capital. Here is a link to Matthew Vine’s cohort:  http://www.reformationproject.org/conferences/apply

Final Thoughts

We know we are forgiven in Christ. Do we also know we are accepted in Christ? Do we show grace but withhold acceptance? Do you have someone in your life who accepts you completely? Do you accept other people completely? How can we better see that love resolves the paradox of accepting my self–my true, authentic, glorious, ugly, crazy, messy, wonderful self? What do the Holy Scriptures teach about acceptance?

Day I: Tuesday evening session
Speaker: Pastor Oscar
Anecdote: George Mueller
Challenge: 10 hairy audacious prayer topics

This sermon was based on George Mueller. His goal was to live in a way that showed people God can be trusted. He built orphanages throughout England, but never asked for a penny. In the morning he would wake up and tell the orphans that there was no food for breakfast, but they should pray and thank God. Then someone would usually come and bring breakfast because God put it on their heart to serve. He never took a salary. When he was 70, he decided to go out as a missionary and for more than a decade he went out traveling the world and preaching. The Pastor challenge us to pray prayer topics that “make God sweat.” Usually we pray things like: give me an “A” on my exam or in the mall, “Lord give me a parking spot.” But the Pastor dared us to pray 10 hairy audacious prayer topics that God will answer. A few I thought of was WL having its own building and not one more death from gang violence in Chicago. Or praying for my cousin, D, who is a hostile atheist to serve the Lord or C to have a job in finance paying more than 45K a year. These are crazy scary prayer topics and I realized I don’t pray them because I am scared that God will not deliver. But he is God and he can be trusted.

Day II: Wednesday morning session
Speaker: Pastor Oscar
Anecdote: Moravian Missionaries to the Leper Colony
Challenge: Stop living for yourself

His first question was: Are the things you will live for after graduation worthy of Christ dying for? My question to you is: why did Christ die? The answer is in 2 Corinthians 5:15. “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” The Pastor mentioned that God does not want to be a part of our plans; he wants YOU to be fulfilled in HIS plans. He shared about a leper colony. There were 2 lepers working in a field, one had no legs and he was on the back of a leper who had no arms. These lepers were completely cut off from society. But who would tell them about Jesus? 2 Moravian missionaries went out and preached to them. But what would happen if those 2 fell? There were more Moravian missionaries lining up to be sent out. The Pastor also shared that, “No great advances for Christianity were made by men and women who were unwilling to give up their lives.” He also shared John 12:24, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
It is only in dying to self that we can live. He finished by asking us again: Are the things you live for worthy of Christ dying for? Do we have the faith of a mustard seed? Are we too afraid to dream big dreams for the kingdom?

Breakout Session I
Speaker: Kate McCord
Topic: Why does God called us to dangerous places?

Kate lived in Afghanistan. Before she started she said that it would be a heavy session. She started by showing us pictures of a dozen Christian how were murdered in the Middle East. She said this is no joke. She shared how she was in the middle of no where in Lancaster, Pennsylvania at a concert and was talking to a guitarist. She mentioned that she lived overseas. He asked, “Where?” She said, “Afghanistan.” He said, “Do you know Glen?” and his eyes filled with tears. Then her eyes filled with tears because she knew Glen. He was a Christian who worked in Afghanistan and had been martyred. Danger is real. Living for Jesus is not a romantic safe story. Many of Kate’s friend asked her repeatedly, “Can’t you just send a check?” Once on facebook she read a quote, “The safest place is in the center of God’s will.” To this Kate answered, “False, the safest physical place is not in God’s will. The safest place is in Calvary. It is the safest place for my soul. ”

But why does God do this? Why does he take the brightest and best? Those who have fallen were humanitarian aid workers, doctors, linguist, dentist, nurses, eye doctors. They went to serve. She gave a couple of reasons.

First, God loves people. On the final day of the conference there was a US soldier who had been deployed in Iraq. I sat next to him and heard him sniffling. It was crazy to see a grown man in his army outfit cry. But he said he hated terrorist because they killed his brothers and friends. And yet now God was calling him to serve ISIS terrorist. God calls us to dangerous places because he loves the ISIS terrorists and he wants them all saved. God is like the Father on Thanksgiving who says that his table is not full enough. There are families on Thanksgiving who say there are not enough people here, invite more. That is God.

Secondly, Jesus went there first. Jesus does not call us anywhere that he did not go first.
Thirdly, It awakens the church to pray and be unified.

Fourthly, one cannot hold someone’s hand from 7000 miles away. FB is good, but you cannot give someone mourning the loss of their son a hug over facebook. They don’t need an email; they need someone physically there.

Fifthly, it brings us closer to Him. Kate said that it was hard to live in Afghanistan, but harder to leave. She walked with Jesus in those places and those places are precious. She met Jesus in those horrible place. She had a Dutch friend who was married and had 2 small daughters in Holland. On his last day in Afghanistan he was kidnapped. Fortunately, he made it back to his family. But he said that while he was chained to the wall at the hands of the terrorist he felt closest to the Lord. And he misses those moments of intimacy.

I personally saw how we humans are so afraid of pain and suffering, but pain and suffering are teachers. They are the pressure cookers that mold us into the image of Christ. And they are things not to be feared or avoided but embraced and treasure that JC deems us worthy of suffering for his name.

Breakout Session II
Speaker: Agency Remember Nhu
Topic:Can we end child sex slavery in this generation?

The agency is called Nhu in honor of a 13 year old girl in Cambodia. This girl was a Christian because she went to a Catholic school. She made an arrangement to clean the school and to study for free. She was 7 at the time. But when she was 13 her grandmother borrowed 60 $ for groceries. She had to pay it back with the high interest of 20$ per week. She only made 25$ total in a month. So she had no choice but to sell Nhu.

Do you know why human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry? How many times can you sell drugs a ba of drugs? Once. You sell heroine; it’s snorted once and gone. How many times can you sell a girl child in her lifetime? Maybe 7,000 or 70, 000 times. One girl shared how she was raped 15 times a night and they sewed up her private part up so she would still feel like a virgin; they did it twice. In Santa Cruz Bolivia the man who started Remember Nhu saw a 7 year old child dressed up like a doll with shorts barely covering her bottom and a halter top and full makeup. She was emaciated so she looked like 5 years old. She was wearing high heels. And he saw her come up to a grown man and offer herself to him. Once he saw that image he could never get it out of his mind.

We all have a responsibility in some way. There are 1.2 million children sold into sex slavery every year. Thats 2 children per minute. Once they are sold in Cambodia and Thailand, 97% of them contac aid and die in less than 3 years. In Thailand human trafficking makes up 14% of the GNP and in Cambodia 20%. The perpetrators are ⅓ local, ⅓ foreigners and ⅓ government officials. In the Bible Jesus rebuked the religious leaders for ravishing the house of widows. In certain parts of the world political leader literally ravish their people. If human trafficking stops what economic endeavor will take its place. And why would the legislators want to stop it if they are the ones committing it?

Conclusion:
I am so thankful for this conference. It reminded me of how much this world needs Christians living out their faith.

I have only been in my current chapter for a little over a year now, but I feel like what happened last night was something, by accounts of many former and current long standing members that at the very least was very new. Instead of having a bible study, testimony sharing bible symposium my pastor decided that we should do something to minister to non-believers, or sceptics. This was a key idea in Stephan Lutz’s book that was required reading for UBF leaders recently. The idea that book, of which I cannot recall the name, is that if only minister to the churched we are not really fulfilling the great commission. As followers of Christ we must take the message to the places that need it the most and this includes hostile arenas. In my experience colleges offer the most hostile arenas for the modern evangelist. I can recall just two days ago a pastor coming to SIUE to preach on the quad. He was assaulted by an atheist after affirming that Levitical Law was the word of God (to be fair to all involved, his wording could have been a little bit better in light of Galatians…) I was very inspired by the change I saw in my pastor’s move for this. Here are some things of note.

An Unrestricted Forum

As a teacher I know well the danger that comes with an unrestricted forum. It can lead to some major issues. If we allow for all opinions, it is very easy to run into situations where people’s emotions get the best of them. It also allows for people to make themselves looks vulnerable (read: stupid). The bonus is it allows for some major change in people. The degree in which is can be bad is also the degree in which it can be good. I was under the impression that the conversation would be more of a panel style. This would allow for no possibility of the above problems. When I arrived I found that it was more of an open forum. I also discovered we had ran out of room. We had so many students that half the missionaries moved to the hall to make room.

The bible answer men

We looked hard to find an authority to host the forum. Some more prominent UBF leaders such as Dr. Ben Toh were invited but regrettably could not make it. I was selected by default because I had lived for 4 years with an atheist in college. My former roommate’s father also joined me. The pastor made the 3^rd but we still wanted a key note answer man. For this I invited Missionary Nirosh from Springfield UBF. He is fairly new to UBF in Springfield. Nirosh is quite a character. He is originally from Sri Lanka. He tried Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Rastafarianism before he came to Christianity. He has missioned in Papua New Guinea, India and Indonesia mostly dealing with tribal peoples. He is the most graceful man I know. In addition to runing a company that helps various groups improve their public image, he is also frequently called in when various Christian organizations need advice on changing their image. He was truly a God send. Nirosh is also the most graceful man I know and he delivers the message in Springfield UBF once a month.

Adam

Adam was the only actual atheist who was there. All the other students in attendance were Christian. I want to note two things from this. First I believe that many college Christians want answers to the challenges to Christianity. They don’t merely seek the basic gospel, for many growing up in church this has all been made known to them. Many college Christians fall away from faith because these lingering doubts grow and go unanswered. Adam had a list of questions to answer and instead of a panel style discussion it turned into Adam asking a list of questions he brought and the whole room answering him. I tried to directly answer him as best as I could. Nirosh’s answers would often times be so full of grace I felt as though they could not be possibly convincing but never the less this caused Adam to soften as the night went on. He was not so hostile by the end and I was thankful for his arrival. He was born and raised a Jew, so he actually had a very accurate knowledge of the Old Testament. Things became awkward when he said something that one of the missionary’s daughters took as an accusation. Her voice was calm but I could tell she was livid. He apologized and things moved along.

The Mormon

The last topic on the agenda was the exclusivity and sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Adam quickly asked which Christianity we meant and I said that we meant traditional Christianity as affirmed by the Nicene Creed. I paused and then said “We must also add the Anathansian Creed. It gives the doctrine of the trinity. The word “trinitas” appears nowhere in the New Testament. We will exclude other Christian groups who do not hold this such as Mormonism.” This caused a Mormon to become very upset with me. She said I had no right or authority to claim Mormonism was not Christianity and she had known Christ all her life. She said she was unsure of where I heard such a claim. I remarked as such “I may be wrong, but my source is Ravi Zacharias. He is a well-known theologian who actually spoke at the Mormon tabernacle some years ago.” My pastor then asked her about the trinity. I was upset but then something remarkable happened. Paul started speaking to her about how God was coeternal and that only the sacrifice of Jesus was needed for salvation. “No!” he nearly yelled when she objected “Only the sacrifice of Jesus is necessary.” This was in stark contrast to the Mormon version of things which says that Jesus is not atonement but actually an example. That we must follow the law. Nirosh turned to the Adam and said “This is why we don’t bring these things up.” Adam smiled. This woman and my pastor had a discussion on the faith vs works and the trinity with my pastor citing On the Incarnation of the Word to refute her. At some point Nirosh calmed things down by saying that while she may not believe in those aspects of Mormonism he had spoken with Mormons who denied that God was triune.

 
Conclusion
Overall I felt like the conference was a great success despite the awkwardness I felt at times. I am unsure I want to be the answer man again because it was very frightening to me at times. With my friends who are unbelievers I can speak easily, but to total strangers it requires a lot more confidence that felt lacking in me at times.

How An Older Christian Can Be An Effective Member In An Intergenerational Mission Team

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:34-35).

In June 2013, I was blessed to be part of an exploratory team to Northern Canada to explore the feasibility of sending missionaries to the Aboriginal people. There were five of us. Two of the members, the pastor and myself, are in our forties. The other three were in their mid twenties. We were all from the white, middle class suburbia of a Midwest university town nestled in the midst of corn fields. The trip lasted for eight days. We drove together for 15 hours, stayed in hotels, in two cabins, road in a train for 18 hours, and drove home 15 hours. We were in close proximity. We had many things in common, like a common faith in Jesus and a common calling to the North and a desire to serve Christ in the region. But there were differences. There was a generational difference; a difference in our theological training, the pastor has a Phd and heads up a 300 member non-denominational Bible church. I am a lay person in the church having experience in “tent making” and “house church” ministry, and the younger people are Campus Crusade for Christ grads and receiving missionary training at a missions agency. We are different and we would never have to face these differences and grow through them unless we were flung into a mission together, by God. The eight days of being in close proximity was indeed a blessing and a growing experience which I thank God for. I profoundly learned so many lessons about being an older Christian on an intergenerational gospel mission team and I was inspired to share what I learned through my experience. This article will touch upon nine areas that people need to concern about when they become part of such a team. They are:

1. Realize that there is a generational gap;
2. Find God’s will;
3. Be  a team supporter;
4. Serve others;
5. Be ready to sacrifice;
6. Think about the needs of other members in the team;
7. Have a spiritual relationship;
8. Build honest and sincere relationships;
9. Control your sinful nature.

May God establish countless intergenerational Gospel mission teams so that the Gospel of Jesus Christ may spread throughout the world.

Part 1: Biblical Foundation for Operating In an Inter-generational Gospel Team

As a key verse for this article, I chose John 13:34-35. I think this command is the basis for any ongoing team effort to reveal Jesus to an unbelieving world. In this passage, Jesus gave his disciples a new command. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disci­ples, if you love one another.” (ESV) Until now the disciples had concentrated on their personal relationship with Jesus. Each one had formed an intimate relationship with Jesus. But now it was time for them to learn to love one another. It was time for them to care for one another, overcoming any self-cen­ter­edness. Jesus wanted them to love one another as he had loved them. This is the power source of loving other believers that we are called to work with.

It was not easy to love each other. The disciples had come from varied backgrounds. They were from different age groups. They had different preferences and pet peeves. They were living in close proximity for over three years. It might have been very hard to learn to love one another. Peter and John competed with each other to receive Jesus’ love and to be recognized as leaders. They would both have to learn how to humble themselves to love the other person and build him up. Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot were natural adversaries. But Simon would have to learn to curb his patriotism and Matthew would have to learn how to sacrifice for the sake of others. How could they possibly learn to love one another? The key…remembering Jesus and how he had loved each of them.

Jesus’ command to “Love one another” is not an option as a Christian. They had to struggle to love one another as an absolute command of Jesus. In other words, in any circumstance they had to love one another. We live in a generation that is motivated by feelings. Many people are will­ing to love others when they feel love in their hearts. But we cannot obey Jesus’ command only when we feel like it. We must obey this com­mand even when we don’t feel like it.

By loving each other with God’s love, all people will know that they are disciples of Jesus. When the love of Jesus circulated within and among them, they could have Jesus in their midst and thus reveal Jesus’ love to the world. Even though Je­sus would not be with them in the flesh, the Spirit of Jesus, which mani­fests the holy love of God, would be with them. The Spirit of Jesus’ love would mark them as unique among all people in the world and people would take notice. And that is why, loving one another with God’s, unconditional, holy love, is so important. It is the way that God wants to advertise the gospel to those whom we are called to share it with.

Part ll: Learning How To Apply Jesus’ Command In An Inter-generational Team

I thank God for the opportunity to learn some of these principles of living as a team of Jesus’ disciples, when I went on the eight day exploratory journey to Northern Ontario. The nuances of team building became very real to me. I discovered many things about myself and areas that I need to grow in. I want to share the things that I learned, as an older disciple, with you.

1. Realize that there is a generational gap.

To all you older Christians, you are not as “in the know” as you think you are. There have been advances in technology that I am not even aware of. The younger people had constant access to their smart phone. If we were having a conversation, it was a matter of seconds before the correct information was accessed on their phones. When a question came up they reacted quickly with the exact answer backed up by a web site. If directions were needed, the exact directions are summoned within seconds, by the young person. This can be very disconcerting, even threatening, to an older person, who is used to being the expert in knowledge among younger people.

There is also other media. In the truck we were sharing our music. I didn’t know I could hook my iPod up to the stereo system. To the young people, it seemed like second nature. It made the older person feel a little more out of the mix. I need to realize that the young people are more capable than someone twice their age in many areas. Be up on the latest technology. Young people will spend hours to try to find a connection. They will walk in a rain storm to find a connection. Respect that. They will be able to find any street in any town, anywhere on planet earth. They will be able to do things with car stereo or a smart phone that you would never dream could be done. What does this mean practically? Allow yourself to be humbled by their accuracy and quick answers. Just look, listen and learn. Determine to be on a continual, lifelong learning trajectory. Learn to be quiet…listen and learn and realize that you are in need to be taught by young people.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reads, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:” There are seasons even in your life in ministry. You may not think that you are on the way out…but you are. In one sense we are on the way out in a certain season in our lives, but entering another season. We tend to think that we will always be the leaders blazing the path. But we are being phased out of certain areas of ministry to become engaged in another. That is good news actually. Be aware of what season of life you are in and serve God accordingly. Beware of always remaining in the same season decade after decade. The more mature Christians may be able to offer things like advice, counseling, and wisdom, and serve in supportive functions, that comes from being twenty years or more ahead of others on the journey of life.

There is a certain season that you are in, that God wants to use you in a unique way.  People in the 70’s are now using their connections and relationships they have built over the years to introduce younger people to the mission field.  They are providing the expertise, the recommendations, the education, the cultural sensitivity training. The people in the 40’s to 60’s are forming the new networks. They are supporting the younger missionaries. They are opening up the roads to the mission field and in some cases holding out the vision and providing the support.

I know from my own family, the kids are learning from experiencing life with us. But they are more interested in their parents playing supportive roles and learning from their example. That could be a good way to think about how to mentor a new generation of missionaries. Borrowing an analogy from a friend’s description of Native ministry, mentoring could be like taking off in an airplane. The younger Christian is in the driver’s seat. They take off. They fly the plane and land it. The more mature Christian is in the passenger seat with his hand ready to take control in case of danger or an emergency and to give advice when asked. What do you think of this analogy? Is it appropriate in mentoring this new generation of missionaries?

Being aware of the generation gap, we need to make efforts to bridge that generation gap. Take time out to listen to other peoples’ music and appreciate it. The preferences you have are formed by your experiences. They grew up experiencing other things. They may not feel the same way about Eric Clapton or Keith Green as you do, nor should they. When we were riding we were listening to the Trews. (http://www.thetrewsmusic.com/) The younger people listened to a whole Eric Clapton album.  Be willing to let go of control of the music to the younger people. Don’t impose your preferences too much. Listen to others and respect them their choices. Give honor and deference to those whom God is raising up. And to be certain, that person will be younger than you are.

Don’t just groom a young person so they can be just like you to take your place of leadership in your idea of ministry. They do this in countries like Cuba. Let the young people be who they are. The world is different place than when you were a young Christian leader. The culture is changing. The younger Christian knows how to navigate the culture, without compromising the gospel, better than you can. They are coming onto the scene with a whole bunch of skills that the mission desperately needs. (That you can not even conjure up.)

Accept the fact that there will be different ways to live out a devotional life while on a team. I come from two decades of group, formal, morning, prayer meetings, singing out of a hymnal and praying from lists of prayer topics. My choice in doing devotionals is group oriented and formal. On the exploratory team I brought a hymnal with me. I was expecting to sing with others. But this was not the case. I discovered that young people are not into singing hymns together from a hymn book. And do you know what? That is OK. I need to be broad minded and accept all forms of personal devotion while living as a member of a team. I just took my hymn book, went to the edge of the forest and sang to God, the birds, the insects and the trees. It was very comforting.

Don’t become angry when faced with generational preferences being expressed. I have known a church dividing when the younger generation wanted to express their faith in a new way. The older generation became inflexible and even angry at the prospect of change. This turned off the young people. I think it is because the older peoples’ reaction robbed them of hope. The church lost 40% of their members because of the older generation’s lack of flexibility. In the words of the band REO Speedwagon, “turn the page and roll with the changes.”

2. Find God’s will

We must find the Missio Dei, for each of us, personally, and engage in it. God is growing his church and be content and patient with what God is doing in your life and you ministry. Don’t get ahead of the Spirit. Trust God and pray through each step of the next leg of your journey.

Don’t push your own personal goal and agenda. I mean, don’t project your own dreams for your ministry on others. Accept what God is doing in the hearts of the people who have been brought into your team. Accept what the people are offering. This is a very personal to me. I am a father of five and I was heading up a single family house church ministry for twelve years with my family members being the main players in ministry. I was projecting my own hopes for my ministry on them, with no concern about what God wanted for them. I cared very little about their personal calling. The end result of this venture was constant demands, judgment and criticism. It led to broken relationships with those close to me.
But God came to my rescue. A very wise, senior missionary lady gave me advice. When I was inquiring how to apply basic rules in my home, she told me to let go of my rules. She meant to be graceful, trust God and let people be free to follow the Lord as they have been called. I was so enmeshed in my old way of thinking that it literally took me two years to get out of it. At first I was losing all hope for ministry. But God helped me to stop projecting my hopes and dreams on others. On this last journey I could begin to understand God’s purpose in all of this. By his grace, I could become a more graceful mentor to younger Christians. I could be used by God to nurture what He is doing and not what I want to happen. I can let God be God and let people grow according to his grace. I still have a long way to go, but I praise Jesus for leading me on this path and using this exploratory journey to teach me why all of this was happening to me over the past two years.

3. Be a team supporter

Like I touched up in the previous section, maybe God has been preparing you, as an older Christian, to mentor and support young missionary teams with much prayer, grace, service and support. This is an excellent way to be team supporter. Listen to how Paul and his team supported the new believers in Thessalonica, “You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers. ¹¹ For you know how, like a father with his children, ¹² we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.” 1 Thess 2:13-14. (ESV) Not that the other members of the team are children, for they are not, but the point is, older Christians are called to certain role within a team.

Older Christians can be good counselors. I saw the importance of this on trip. Young people want someone to talk to. They are searching for their calling. They want to know how and where to devote their energies. They want to bounce their ideas off of someone. They want feedback. Who doesn’t want all of these things? That is why they will benefit from older Christians to talk to. Older Christians need the confidence to be able to talk to the young people, meeting them where they are and helping then to talk through various issues. They must know they have something valuable to share and engage in conversation. After all God didn’t infuse 40 to 50 years of experience into your life for nothing. Share it with others.

If you can not counsel, then you have to make a supportive environment.  Set the example for others. Participate with your whole heart in worship, prayer, evangelism, outreach and giving. The young people are watching and learning from the older Christian.

Find your unique roll in the mission. The older Christian may not be called to go to an inaccessible region (or maybe they are), but they may be very effective in creating a home base for further operations. The years of experience will have made them better diplomats. They may be very effective in networking with area Christians and churches. I could see this as my role as an older Christian.

The older Christian may be used to be a visionary, planting that vision in other peoples’ hearts. Act 2:17-18 read, “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; ¹⁸ even on my male servantsand female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” We can see these verses working out among the members of our team. God’s spirit is being poured out on all. The young members of our team are full of vision to see the Gospel expand to remote places in Northern Canada. The older members of the team also have visions to see a vast network formed and a mission’s movement formed among the members of the local churches. Both groups want the word of God preached to the people of this present generation.

As we follow the Missio Dei, we may frequently ask ourselves, “What next?” The older person may be the one to present informed options and direction as to where to turn next. They have the experience.

4. Serve others

The older Christian has a great opportunity to serve others on the team, learning of Christ. Luke 22:25-27 reads, “And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. ²⁶ But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. ²⁷ For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” (ESV) It is easy for the older Christian to expect to be served while on a team. After all, they have spent decades being served by their spouses, children and possibly even the church. After a while, serving may not come naturally. They may even feel that serving in certain ways may be beneath them. But Jesus says that the greatest among us is the one who serves, no matter what the age. Being on a team is an excellent opportunity for the older Christian to serve the younger members of the team. One should be ready to serve, taking up the humble role. Here are some examples I learned to serve on our team: make the hotel room a home away from home. Make the whole experience as comfortable as possible. Wash the dishes without being asked. (even the pan nobody wants to touch.) Clean the grill. Cook a meal.  Offer to buy coffee or a doughnut for someone. Pray with other team members. Provide counseling or a listening ear. Carry some bags. There are countless ways to serve others in Jesus’ name.

5. Be ready to sacrifice

John 15:12-13 reads, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Laying down your life for your friends involves denying yourself. There are ample opportunities to practice this while on a team. I am the kind of person that easily goes into sensory overload. When I do, I want to shut down and retreat to a quiet place to recoup. When I am networking with other people, sometimes I feel like I cannot engage in another conversation or visit another person. But that may not be possible on a team. Sometimes I didn’t feel like going to visit another person. I just wanted to do back to my hotel room and rest. But I learned that one way I could lay down my life is to remain engaged when necessary, going that extra mile. What about denying your own ideas and opinion and plans?

Give of your money. It is going to cost you to engage in mission with a team. There is not only providing for your needs, like housing, food and transportation, there are also costs like paying for dinner with someone you hope to network with. When one person is going to pay for the meal, God may be moving your heart to contribute to covering the cost. On one visit, $40 was given to the coffee fund of people whom we visited. There are offerings at the churches we visit. You will need a lot of money. The older Christian usually has more resources and income. The younger members are trying to raise support. Stinginess is not conducive to being an older member on a Gospel mission. Be willing to sacrifice. Give it up older Christians!

6. Think about the needs of other members in the team.

There are intergenerational needs.  If you are older you need to consider yourself like an older brother or sister on the team.  With this in mind, try to relate and talk, engaging individuals in conversation.  Pray for others. Don’t be isolated or individualistic. After all you are part of a team and the greater Christian family.

Keep your shared living space clean. You are not living by yourself. You are living temporarily with someone you barely know. Think about that.

As an older Christian, consider your snoring. If you are older and little over weight the chances are you snore and the other younger people do not. Tell the other person, “It is ok to hit me with a pillow if I snore.”

Be mindful of others family relations. If you are driving by the town of a team member ask them if they want to visit their family member. Take a little time out to think about their social needs.

7. Encourage one another in a spiritual relationship

Team members could encourage one another spiritually. 1 Thessalonians 5:10-11, “who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him. ¹¹ Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” and Hebrews 10:24-25, “And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, ²⁵ not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (ESV)

A team is a perfect place to encourage one another. We were in close proximity for eight days. Matt, my roommate, prayed together for several nights. We could encourage one another by setting the example for others. Set the example in prayer, in worship and in participation. Get into discussions. Get into the group. An older Christian may provide printed learning material, but don’t push it on others. Develop it and present it and allow people to digest it as they desire.

8. Build honest and sincere relationships

If there is one thing that younger Christians want are open and honest relationships. Older people don’t want to share their struggles with younger people. But especially in regards to a team, they need to.  Share about your personal struggles. Be real. People appreciate authenticity. They may even identify with you in your struggles and your struggles may help to show them the way.  After all you are 20 years plus ahead of them on their journey. I was blessed when one girl asked my “Story” while were eating. It was a way that I could share my life testimony on how I met Jesus. I could also share my feelings. When I felt like “shutting down” I told others how I feel. I think they appreciated that.

Don’t always be so serious. I believe Jesus laughed a lot. Laughing is from God. Laughing is good for you in so many ways. On the team we had a lot of good laughs. We shared about some awkward experiences in ministry. We laughed about mosquitoes. We confessed what was on our I-pods. There were times when we laughed until we were in tears. As an older person on a team, show your humorous side. Cut a few jokes. If you don’t know any equip yourself with an internet search. A little humor goes a long way.

Sometimes we feel awkward communicating. But my advice is keep communicating. God will help you to relate.

9. Control your sinful nature

When we are on a Christian mission, there is always a spiritual battle going on. 1 Peter 5:8 reads, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (ESV) Every team has a prayer and goal to reveal Jesus and to proclaim the kingdom of God. But be aware that there are spiritual forces that want nothing more than to destroy the fledgling work that God has begun to grow through your team. Paul says it well when he states in Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ^“ (ESV)  We need to always be aware where the battle is being fought. The schemes of the devil almost always occur in the battleground of our own hearts and minds. The arena can be within the interpersonal relationships of our own team members. But there are some ways to thwart the devil’s schemes.

Some ways are revealed in Ephesians 6:10-13 which read, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. ¹¹ Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. ¹² For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³ Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”(ESV)

First, Ephesians 6:10 reads, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.” This battle is between powerful spiritual forces. We can never stand our ground without depending in God. We must know the fragility of what you are trying to accomplish through our team. For example, harboring negative emotions like, pride can bring everything down. One moment of expressed anger can ruin decades of future co-working. These are things that we find hard to control and may well up in a moment’s notice. Paul exhorts the Ephesians to be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Our God is the Almighty Creator of the heavens and the earth. He is alive and active in his creation. He has a deep concern for his people and listens attentively for their prayers. He is ready, willing and able to help us be spiritually strong. It is his might working in us. May we always depend on the Lord.

Second, we must put on the full armor of God. Look at verse 11, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” It would require a whole other article to describe each piece of the armor. But the point I would like to make here is that God provides pieces of spiritual armor that are effective in protecting us from forces of evil. They are put on through faith. The armor that God prescribes is complete and we must don the whole outfit. Again, we must depend on God and what the Lord has provided.

Third, “Having done all”. Look at verse 13, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”  Knowing that God is there to defend us and knowing that the armor he provides is all sufficient in defending us against the devil’s schemes, does not excuse us from engaging ourselves in the spiritual battle. Verses 13b, “…and having done all, to stand firm.”  God does not just want us to lay there like dead fish floating downstream. He wants his people to be like living fish, swimming upstream. We can stand by engaging our faith. This involves many things, but some basics are prayer, which should be like breathing for us, studying the word and putting it into practice, reversing the trend towards isolation by building relationships, loving and serving one another in Christ’s name, trusting in God, seeking his wisdom and so on and so on. We should not do these things sluggishly or casually, but “Having done all”.  Apply your God given passion.

Fourth, be strengthened in the grace of God. Read Paul’s advice to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:1-3, “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, ² and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful menwho will be able to teach others also. ³ Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” (ESV) Be strengthened in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. We must take deep root in the grace of Jesus. What has Jesus done for each of us? He has granted us the complete forgiveness of sins. He has brought us into his kingdom and with it, eternal life. He is guiding us along the most blessed, fruitful path as we are passing through this world. He floods our hearts with, love, hope, truth, revelation and meaning. He brings convergence in our lives. And this is just the tip of the iceberg! God is good. Knowing the gifts that have literally been poured out on us, though we are undeserving, is pure grace. Being able to be part of an intergenerational team is pure grace. Knowing what we have been saved from, were it not for the grace of God, and being filled with thanksgiving, is part of being strong in the grace of God is all about. This is one way to stand against the devil’s schemes.

When we are on a Christian mission with others we must know ourselves and our sinful tendencies. Know that you have a tendency to be judgmental, competitive, and attention seeking. Here are a few of my spiritual weaknesses that I discovered in myself as I participated on a Christian team.

Don’t compete. I wanted to compete with others in my heart. Don’t do this. Those with 20, 30 or 40 more years more experience with the gospel may be more skilled and have more experience, but you must know that you are not the future of the mission, the younger person is. Anyone with a PhD knows that the more they learn the more aware they are of what they don’t know. Greater learning should make one more humble and dependent on Christ. The younger person’s passion and exuberance, along with their vision and ability to navigate the culture will trump your experience. God will move in the hearts of those we are called to minister to better than you can ever do. For example, I have heard it said that the average age of people in First Nation’s communities is fifteen.  Who are they going to relate to better, the 40-60 year old Christian or the 25 year old Christian couple? The answer is obvious.

Don’t envy. The young person may be more formally trained. They may be getting more attention from the other leaders (for they are the hope of the future), but don’t envy. The older Christian’s role is very important. It most likely will be a “behind the scenes” supportive role. But it is vitally important. Even if you don’t receive the recognition that you think you deserve, you are appreciated and are helping to lay the foundation for future missions. You may be in a different season of life. God wants to use you in different ways. Accept that. Don’t be envious of others whom God is using in different ways. They are in another season of life. They have another calling. Don’t reminisce about the past. Be content with how God is using you now and wants to use you in the future.

Don’t project your own hopes and dreams on others. Here is a big one that has tainted relationships for me in the past. Don’t push your own goal and your own agenda on the younger believer. Accept what God is doing and what people are offering. If you have your own goal and time table, you may find yourself pushing people with unreal expectations and even becoming angry, judgment and disappointed with other people on a daily basis. The younger person will sense this and become resentful or feel pushed into doing something that is not actually from God. They may do things to simply to please the older Christian. That will never be a lasting work of God. It is artificial. You may be projecting your own goals even while losing touch with the culture that is developing around you. Remain humble and keep in step with the Spirit.

Trust God’s Timing, and not ours. Jesus likened the Kingdom of God to a mustard seed. Matthew 13:31-32 reads, “…The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. ³² Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.” (NIV) When a farmer plants the seed, he plants in faith. He knows that the seed has such great potential. He trusts God, that when he plants the seed and waters it, it will produce a crop. But time is needed. “When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. ³⁸ But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.” (1 Cor 15:37) God gives the seed a body as he has determined. It happens in his way and in his time. A few seeds have been planted. Now God is making it grow. We need to just pray and wait in the Lord to unfold things as he has determined. Now is the time to enjoy watching the seeds that were planted as they bear fruit. That is the attitude we must have in regards to our approach to being a member of a Christian team. We must be patient with what God is doing on the mission field and also in peoples’ hearts, especially in the hearts of each team member. Always remember the words of Paul, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (ESV; Php 1:6)

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I want to refer once again to our key verse John 13:34,35, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (ESV)  On a Christian mission we are all part of a team. We are disciples of Jesus called to proclaim the kingdom of God together. The best way to do this is to love one another. If we love one another with Christ’s love, then we can have unity and as we serve the mission, the whole world will know that we are disciples of Jesus. We can present the Gospel with a united front and the world will listen. Coming into close proximity, in a Christian team, makes loving one another more difficult. Having people from differing generations adds to that difficulty. But when we come together with faith in our hearts and with a desire to glorify Jesus, God will help us love one another and glorify the name of Jesus together.

• Can certain aspects of the “gospel of mission” be good? Why or why not?
• How has the “gospel of mission” influenced your Christian walk? Your church?

The Shepherding Movement was fraught with problems. Some of those problems, displayed in several pseudo-Christian organizations that grew out of the movement, have been discussed openly for many years. Most notable in this discussion is Ron Enroth’s book, Churches That Abuse.

The face of the failed Shepherding Movement was Bob Mumford, who became a sort of poster-boy of the movement. In 1989, Mr. Mumford offered a public apology to those hurt by the movement’s teachings and practices.

In his formal statement of repentance Mumford said:

Accountability, personal training under the guidance of another, and effective pastoral care are needed biblical concepts. True spiritual maturity will require that they be preserved. These biblical realities must also carry the limits indicated by the New Testament. However, to my personal pain and chagrin, these particular emphases very easily lent themselves to an unhealthy submission resulting in perverse and unbiblical obedience to human leaders. Many of these abuses occurred within the sphere of my own responsibility.

The movement began to disintegrate in 1986 when its magazine, New Wine, folded due to steady loss of revenue. In the latter years of the 1980s Baxter, Basham, and Mumford officially “released” their disciples from their previous pyramidal authority structure-Prince had already severed his formal ties with the others in 1983.

Yet even with Mumford’s public statement of apology-and in spite of Buckingham’s obituary of the “discipleship era”-the abuse of discipleship and spiritual authority continues unabated by other men (and women) in other churches and movements. (source)

Here are some excerpts from another blog that describe two main reasons why the original Shepherding Movement failed in the United States. One of the failed doctrines taught by the Shepherding Movement was covering theology.

“Most of the Christian church doesn’t believe in covering theology. It appeared on the scene in North America about 40 years ago through something called the shepherding movement. That movement was completely discredited and some of the leaders have publicly repented of their involvement.”

Reason 1 – They replaced Jesus as master.

“In this context, a group of older, more experienced charismatic ministers came together to bring a corrective. The occasion of their meeting was a moral failure of a ministry in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Believing themselves to be equally vulnerable to moral failure apart from better accountability they mutually submitted themselves to one another. When this happened, they described themselves as having a supernatural experience binding their ministries together for life. Initially the group was made of Derek Prince, Don Basham, Bob Mumford, and Charles Simpson. Eventually, former Branham campaign manager Ern Baxter was added to the group, and they became known as “The Fort Lauderdale Five.”

“The five very talented men immediately began to teach on authority, submission and discipleship. Although there were a number of important doctrines, the central doctrine—the one that reshaped the church—was that every person must be submitted to another person (Shepherd/Pastor/Discipler), and that all of your major life decisions should be submitted to this person. Effectively, if unintentionally, this put the individual in the position of having two masters– Jesus and a personal shepherd. With time the personal shepherd gains more power, as Jesus gets less. And in time, this creates a system where those who have unquestioning obedience to man are promoted. All kinds of ungodly things came in through these doors. Several books have been written detailing the kinds of abuse suffered as a result. The scary thing about the whole system is that it started out with the intent of promoting accountability, and eventually enslaved people.”

Reason 2 – They made their shepherd/sheep relationships permanent

“The second dangerous doctrine had to do with “Covenant” relationships or “Spiritual Family.” If being absolutely submitted to another person was an imprisonment, then the covenant relationship was the iron padlock on the door. The idea here is that when you enter into these discipleship relationships, they are permanent, and more broadly that your association with a specific group of believers is permanent. You were in a “Covenant” and if you left the relationship or the fellowship group, you were breaking a covenant. This quickly becomes a very dangerous situation: no matter how terrible your experience becomes with a group or person, you can not leave, and if you do, you believe that you’ve broken a covenant with God, so to get right with God you’d have to go back to the abuse! You slowly become enmeshed with the other members of the group and separated from the outside world. Your “spiritual family” becomes more important than your natural family or other believers you’ve had relationship with. You slowly become more and more isolated and more and more dependent upon the group or leader. At a certain point if your leaders do not check the pattern, it becomes a full fledged cult. Normally, however this pattern is held in tension with Biblical expectations so these groups rarely become true cults, while still exhibiting cult-like features. Scary.”

Result – The fruit of absolute obedience to human authority

“After a couple of years, the fruit of these doctrines became obvious to those outside of the movement such as Jack Hayford, Pat Robertson, Demos Sharkarian and others, and they confronted the “Five” in the infamous “Shootout at the Curtis Hotel,” in 1975. The result was that the Five issued an “apology” which did not really represent repentance on their part. They rejected the excesses of some who had followed their teachings to their logical conclusions, without accepting that the doctrines they were teaching had been the direct cause. Their persistence created a split in the charismatic movement between those who accepted the authority teaching, and those who did not.”

“This split is still evident today but under different names. No one dares be associated with the “Shepherding Movement” by name because it was so discredited. But many still believe in the basic principles to some degree or another, and find support in classic authors such as Watchman Nee. The “Prophetic” stream of the church became the branch of the church that did not accept authority teachings, and the “Apostolic” branch became that which did. The tragedy is that the basic observations of the Five were correct (i.e. need for discipleship, accountability) but their solution of hierarchical personal submission was not. Therefore the “prophetic” stream still tends to reflect the lack of authority that the rebellious hippies brought into the church through the Jesus Movement. Chaos in the meeting is welcomed and even praised as spiritual, and generally everyone does their own thing, hears from God totally in isolation, etc. On the other hand, those with the Shepherding heritage value “order” over all else. While they speak in tongues and claim to be charismatic, often in practice, the gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy are not welcomed, because order is valued over the moving of the Spirit. Or prophecy can only come through an established authority in the church hierarchy.”

Jesus is Lord

“In summary, the Shepherds were right right to raise the issue of authority, but they were wrong about submission to other men. Christ is Lord of all, and each should be in submission to Him by the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Because we need order and peace, we should submit to those who lead ministries over us just like we would to our bosses at work. But this is far different from owing them allegiance in our personal or spiritual lives. And when we come to the place where following them violates our conscience, it’s time to move on.”

Questions:

Do you see or experience anything in your UBF chapter that resembles something above? Are there similarities between the Shepherding Movement and UBF ministry? What should be done about this?

It is said, “Our UBF missionaries worked so hard for mission, and they suffered and sacrificed so much to serve God and feed selfish sheep.” PTL! But Mother Barry has said countless times with great beaming joy, “I have sacrificed nothing for Jesus.” I believe her. So are our UBF missionaries tired and burnt out because they suffered and sacrificed more than Mother Barry?

Anthony Bradley wrote a blog called The ‘new legalism’: How the push to be ‘radical’ and ‘missional’ discourages ordinary people in ordinary places from doing ordinary things to the glory of God. He observed that youth and young adults are stressed and burnt out from the regular shaming and feelings of inadequacy if they are not doing something “missional.” They are fed the message that if they don’t do something for mission they are wasting their life. The sad result is that many feel ashamed if they “settle” into ordinary jobs, get married, start families, live in small towns, and live a simple quiet industrious life (1 Thess 4:11). Their fear is being an ordinary Christian with nothing special to boast about. Why is this happening?

Bradley postulates why. Many churches are committed to being “missional”–a church where people see themselves as missionaries in local communities. As a result, living out one’s faith became narrowly celebratory only when done in a special radical “missional” way. Getting married, having children, getting a job, saving and investing, being a good citizen, loving one’s neighbor no longer qualify as virtuous. Bradley cites a couple who were so “missional” they decided to not procreate for the sake of taking care of orphans. He concludes that missional, radical Christianity is the “new legalism.” Thus, being a Christian in a shame-driven “missional,” “radical” church does not sound like rest for the weary.

Might a similar scenario in our UBF context be what is causing our UBF missionaries to be tired and burnt out? UBF’s stress and emphasis has always been MISSION. It is Bible Korea and World Mission. It is to be a shepherd nation, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. It is to be a 1:1 Bible teacher for world campus mission. It is to pledge to be a missionary to the ends of the earth. It is to always emphasize UBF’s “core values” as front and center. Your marriage MUST be for mission. After marriage, you better not be “family centered.” If you have kids, you “sacrifice them on the altar of UBF mission.” Even for our upcoming ISBC, UBF leaders want to make sure that the world mission command is pounded and expounded loudly and clearly–as though the theme of LOVE is not enough.

Doesn’t this teach and communicate that ONLY such a UBF Christian who conforms to UBF’s mission and core values is a “good and worthy” Christian?

Is UBF legalistic about mission? About her “core values”?

Might this be the reason why our UBF missionaries are tired, burdened and burnt out year after year, UBF conference after UBF conference?

Brian,

I apologize I haven’t read all your postings here. Help me out. What do you feel toward those who have hurt you?

Wesley, this is such a good question. Brian has given you his response. I want to respond as well and explain to you how I feel. My answer has gotten too long to comfortably fit in the comment section, so I have decided to post it as an article.

Some people who come to this website perceive a lot of “bitterness.” They assume that this “bitterness” is unhealthy and dangerous and lies at the root of the broken relationships between our members and former members. They see the “bitterness” as our moral failure.

I don’t accept that point of view. I have thought long and hard about this. I have searched the Bible for answers. I have prayed and cried out to God. I have studied theology, missiology and cross-cultural understanding. I have searched my heart and delved into my own darkness. I have gone to Christian therapy to see my way through the emotions of the past few years, emotions that may appear to be surfacing now but have been with me for a very long time. And I am now convinced that this “bitterness”  is not our moral failure.

One book that has helped me to make sense of this is Strange Virtues: Ethics in a Multicultural World by Bernard Adeney. This was one of the recommended readings prior to the February 2010 North American UBF staff conference. We never discussed the book. I suspect that very few of our missionaries read it. But I have read the book very carefully and have returned to it many times since then.

I read this book from an unusual perspective: not as a Western missionary, but as a recipient of efforts by missionaries from the East. I find that I do not identify with the missionary, the stranger who enters the foreign mission field. I identify with the natives.

Let me explain.

Adeney was born in Shaghai, China and raised in a missionary family. He has lifelong calling  has been to study, from Asian and American perspectives, the difficulties and misunderstandings that arise in cross-cultural missionary activity. The historic failures of Western missionaries have brought deep clarity and insight to Adeney and other scholars of mission. This hard-won insight is that the goal of the missionary, a stranger in a foreign land, is above all to build friendships of mutual trust and long-term commitment in which the gospel brings new life to both parties.

Adeney writes (p. 29):

When we enter another culture, whether across town or across the ocean, we enter as strangers… Even after many years of  living in another culture we remain as strangers.

The first role of the stranger is not to teach, give and to serve. It is to learn, to receive, and to be served by the host. Only when these first tasks are mastered to the host’s satisfaction does the stranger earn the privilege of being allowed to criticize and exert influence over the host’s culture.

Missionary work is not the act of one person giving the gospel to another. Missonary work happens as a mutual  cross-cultural relationship develops where the rules of hospitality between stranger and host are not violated. Over time, new understanding of the gospel emerges and transforms all parties.

Adeney calls this process incorporation. Incorporation is a level of unity in which the stranger and the host never change roles, but operate in mutual edification. He writes  (p. 136):

An ideal goal… is incorporation.  A stranger is incorporated when she or he is fully accepted and integrated into the culture. Both sides have made a long-term commitment to the other which will not be terminated even if the stranger leaves. When you are incorporated, you have internalized the culture to the extent that it has become part of you. Incorporation does not occur at the initiative of the stranger. It is an act of the host to make the stranger a real part of the family.  The closest analogy may be adoption. But it is also like marriage in that both parties make a commitment to each other.

Adney also warns that the stranger must always remember that it is the natives who must adopt him into their family, not the other way around.. In the passage below, Adeney refers to Anthony Gittens, another favorite author of mine (p. 136):

As in adoption, a person who has been welcomed into a new family does not ever become structurally equal with his new “parents.”  The new culture may become family, but it will also remain your host, at least for a very long time. As an incorporated foreigner, you remain a quest, structurally subordinate to your hosts. Gittens  suggests that if strangers are unwilling to accept this and how it in their attitudes, they are unlikely to be incorporated into the culture.

And then Adney includes this quote from Gittens (p. 136):

Acceptance by the host is no carte blanch for the stranger to forget the precedence due to the other….If the stranger wishes to remain “free” and not be beholden to the host, then incorporation is not desirable; but where incorporation does take place, then noblesse oblige [requires] the guest to defer to the host and be loyal rather than critical…  If we sense that we are incorporated into a group, do we thereby acknowledge our responsibility to support and be loyal to our hosts?  Or do we retain the “right” to criticize and judge others, thus effectively making it undesirable for us to seek incorporation?  And what of our hosts; do we appreciate the relative slowness in accepting us fully?  Do we understand how seriously they take the duties of hospitality?   Can we accept that they remain superordinate, since we are on their turf and not our own?  And do we nevertheless aspire to learning how to be appropriate strangers, or do we with to repudiate the conventions and seize intitiative and control?”

The stranger must always tread carefully, never forgetting that he is the stranger (p. 132):

Gittens asks “Do we show adequate and genuine  deference to our hosts?  Do we willingly acknowledge their authority in the situation, and their rights and duties as hosts?  Do we allow ourselves to be adequately positioned as strangers , according to the legitimate needs of the hosts?   Or do we try to seize initiatives, show them clearly what our expectations are, make demands on them, and  thus  effectively refuse the role of stranger, thereby impeding them  from being adequate hosts?”

Adeney believes that this strangeness, when properly embraced and understood, is a gift. This gift will be missed, however, if the missionaries refuse to submit to their hosts and continually turn to one another for validation and insight. The result of this can only be a reinforcement of cultural bias that will sabotage the whole enterprise. If the missionary doesn’t fully embrace the role of a stranger, it will reap profound, unintended, negative consequences. The missionary must guard the autonomy and uniqueness of the host and give him precedence. If he does, miracles happen (p. 141):

This may be one of the highest aims for which we were created.  Each person, and each culture, has a unique secret.  Each is capable of knowing something of God which no one else knows.  In the meeting of strangers we have the opportunity to share that treasure with each other.

For years, I tried to become part of the UBF family, but have never really succeeded. I have always felt like the stranger trying to learn and adapt to a foreign family. I have rarely, if ever, been allowed to serve as the host. For years, I thought that my inability to fit in was a personal failure I needed to own. But now I am realizing that this has been the failure of the entire UBF paradigm from the start.

In fact, I am now convinced that it was really not necessary for me to be made part of this family at all.  Rather, it was the missionaries who should have become part of my family. 

Without a doubt, we Westerners in UBF have been blessed by the “strangeness” of our Korean missionaries. I don’t deny this and I remain thankful for their efforts to serve. But there is something going on in me and in many others that makes it impossible for us to be content and silent right now. We feel compelled, Wesley, to express other emotions which under the present circumstances are appropriate and valid.

As a young and troubled college student, I didn’t know any of this. I had problems in my birth family which made me vulnerable to the influence of others. However, as time went on and as I matured, I have come to love and respect my parents and siblings. I have seen their genuine faith and soul searching. I now deeply regret that I had unnecessarily cut my relationship with my Christian family for so many years, because I was expected to put my UBF “family” first.

I have also struggled with my identity. The chaos of American culture in the past few decades had affected me deeply. Rather than learning to navigate the tidal waves of change, I was encouraged to remove myself and adopt a new and strange identity in UBF. The influence and pressure was profound and affected every area of my life: my hairstyle, my clothing, how I married, how I raised my children, and so on.

I tried to suppress my true identity as an American. But that identity was real and it resurfaced. Jesus wants me to be authentic.

How does it feel now to realize all of this?

Well, it is very painful. At times, I feel angry for having unnecessarily given up so much of myself. But I also feel liberated and more alive in Christ than ever.

For so many years, I was told to be “mission-centered” and to not get involved in “civilian affairs.” Those civilian affairs were broadly and unwisely defined as almost any activity outside of UBF. As a result, I lived as an alien and stranger in my own Christian community. I had no time for my neighbors unless they wanted Bible study.  My UBF “family” was extremely demanding of my time and energy and  it is because of them that I became unnecessarily isolated.

Now that I am realizing all that I have missed, how do you think I feel?

As I began to mature and recover my own identity, I experienced the life-giving work of Jesus in my heart, and I felt compelled to share it with others. My husband and I were allowed the chance to organize several UBF conferences and to explore our new understanding of gospel and mission. But our identity, our American strangeness, was not welcomed by the UBF “family.” In fact, we were removed from positions of influence and leadership. Our friendships were damaged through gossip and rude behavior, by manipulation and control (often in the name of “spiritual authority”). As we tried to speak of truthful things, we have been met almost entirely with silence, platitudes, warnings, and rebukes. Efforts at real conversation have been extremely limited and unsatisfactory.

So how do I feel about this?  I think you can guess.

Rules of intercultural hospitality cannot be broken without consequence. The host cannot be disrespected from the start without consequence. When people are pushed down for too long, they will eventually rebel and assert themselves.

I know that I have failed to express myself with the utmost kind of respect that would please the power structures of our Korean-led ministry. I have also broken some rules of hospitality. But I cannot take full responsibility for the state we are in.

I believe the onus is now on the real stranger, the missionary, to admit failure, to lay down control,  and restore the relationship.

Perhaps there are other Americans whose stories are different. But I know that there are many whose stories are similar to mine. After many years trying unsuccessfully to fit into this UBF “family,” they are now moving on. They will understand what I mean when I say that I have not been given the respect that a host deserves. They will know the intensity of the emotions of disillusionment and bitterness which must no longer be suppressed but addressed with painful openness and honesty. They will know the strength of my feelings when the guests in our midst still can’t acknowledge and address our experience and our desire to be heard.

Some of us won’t stop speaking about these issues because of an undying hope that a miracle of grace may yet occur. But the miracle won’t happen without real dialogue which will be very uncomfortable, messy and  intentional.

But honestly … I know that I do functionally link my shepherding, my (perceived) success and my salvation together? Every Sun I am happy when and if I preach well. But if I am not moved by the grace of Jesus through my own sermon (and if my wife is not happy with it!), I become depressed for the rest of the day, sometimes for the rest of the week…until I get to do better and prove myself the following Sun! I know I should not be like this. I know, “Jesus is all I want, and Jesus is all I need.” Yet that is not how I often am. It seems that I need some other validation in addition to Jesus. Why do I connect my sense of my own self-worth and my accomplishments (or lack of it!) to my salvation? Functionally and practically, it is because Jesus alone is not enough for me.

Why do we feel defensive and angry if someone criticizes our church or ministry? The “official biblical reason” is, “You must not complain. You must be thankful.” But is the real reason not something deeper?

We all default to idolatry. Before becoming a Christian, our idols are obvious: sex, drugs, rock and roll, and money. But after becoming Christians, we know that we should repent of such sins. But does stopping our morally reprehensible behavior necessarily change our inner heart’s inclinations? Even if it is to a miniscule degree, do we not replace:

• Sex with prayer meetings?
• Drugs with singing hymns?
• Rock and roll with Christian fellowship?
• Money with being fruitful by having our church grow in number with many Christian disciples under our stewardship?

Is the strongest religious idolatry our sense of our fruitfulness and accomplishment as a Christian and as a church? I want to be happy in Christ regardless of anything else. But the reality is that if many are coming to me and to church, I am happy. But if few are coming I am forced to make plastic smiles, which I am not too good at doing! If I am appreciated I feel good. But if I am not, I feel bad. In the words of Paul we exclaim, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24) All Christians know what the simple and exact answer is (Rom 7:25). And yet…

Does this sound bizarre or far fetched? Are our hearts that deceptively and persistently idolatrous?

Sandwitched between 2 staggering sorrows. I arrived in Manila at 1 am on Fri July 20. I didn’t sleep because of jet lag. I received an email about the horrific Colorado shootings, which killed 12 and wounded 58. The next day I received another staggering news of a close friend having a stillborn birth. My heart has been aching and thrown into a tailspin ever since I arrived in Manila. Sandwitched between these 2 sorrows, I attended Antipolo UBF on Fri evening, a 2 year old church plant. The lead church planter is Dr. John Talavera, a professor of Anatomy and Physiology and his lovely wife Hannah.

50 students came; 3 student leaders established. Last year, when I visited Antipolo UBF, I expected a few students to show up for a weekly group Bible study since it was a new church plant. But 30 students showed up which stunned me. Now a year later, 50 students attended on Fri. It was as exhilarating as the 2 events were staggering. In 1 year, 3 student leaders have been established who now lead 3 weekly group Bible studies.

Jesus slept during the storm. The students welcomed me with a song and gave me an Ignite T-shirt, the name of their Christian fellowship on the campus. Based on Hannah’s recommendation, I led an impromptu Bible study on Mk 4:35-41. I emphasized that Jesus slept peacefully during a storm because he trusted God, while the disciples were frantic and fearful of losing their life because they trusted themselves and their own abilities. Since they will have their preliminary exams next week, I asked, “Do you sleep well?”

The gospel. Mainly, I explained the gospel to them. Though Jesus slept in peace in the storm, one day, on the cross, he would not be able to sleep. He had to die awake and in full consciousness because of my sins, so that I, who should be restless and sleepless forever, would be able to sleep in peace all my days. During this storm, Jesus could trust God and sleep. But during the ultimate storm of his life on the cross, Jesus could not sleep, because of his love for me. He who should live would willingly and voluntarily die, so that I, who should die, might live.

Teary testimonies. After my exposition of the text, several students shared with tears how they were moved by Jesus who loved them and died for them in spite of their sins. While some cried, others laughed with joy.

Thank God for the work of the Holy Spirit in Antipolo. It was my first day of a 2 month trip. But it felt like the highlight and climax of my trip on the first day. Pray for me and for my friends in the Philippines.

• Belief and Behavior.
• Creed and Conduct.
• Doctrine and Duty.

Necessarily, the first always precedes the second, or the second always follows the first. Through Bible study, our behavior follows our belief, our conduct follows our creed, and our duty follows our doctrine, and not the other way around.

Freedom and rest. Tit 3:8 says, “…those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good.” When we trust God, we do what is good. When we truly believe, we behave. Those who know the grace of God are eager to do what is good (Tit 2:11,14). The Christian life is not one where we have to squeeze goodness out of reluctant people. Rather, it is a life that is joyfully lived out when the gospel is preached and taught. It is truly a life of freedom (2 Cor 3:17; Gal 5:1) and rest for our souls (Mt 11:29).

Bible study should proclaim, teach and emphasize the first BCD, because the second BCD follows the first.

What about me? My confession is that for over 2 decades of teaching the Bible as a Christian, I primarily emphasized the second BCD. My Bible teaching is laden with imperatives and commands: deny yourself (Mt 16:24), take up your cross (Mk 8:34), feed sheep (Jn 21:15-17), make disciples (Mt 28:19), meditate on God’s word day and night (Ps 1:2), be joyful (1 Th 5:16), pray continually (1 Th 5:17), always give thanks (1 Th 5:18), etc. If I felt the Bible student was not adequately responding in a timely fashion, I would throw in severe threats for good measure. (If you don’t repent, God will give you AIDS … or the Ebola virus!)

Did I do something wrong? “No” and “Yes.” “No,” because I did teach what the Bible said. But “yes” because I stressed the second BCD of behavior, conduct and duty, rather than the 1st BCD of belief, creed and doctrine. I did not deny the first BCD. However, I stressed the Christian life rather than Christ. I stressed being good rather than the gospel. I stressed doing rather than done. I stressed, “Finish your job,” rather than “It is finished” (Jn 19:30).

Is that a problem? I think it is because when behavior, conduct and duty is emphasized in Bible teaching and preaching, our outward Christian life can seem to be right, while our heart may drift (Mt 15:8; Isa 29:13). But God looks at the heart, not the nice outward Christian appearance (1 Sam 16:7).

Weary and tired. Also, when Christian duty is stressed, we soon become weary and tired. When behavior and conduct is emphasized, the Christian life is driven by a sense of duty and burden, rather than the unending wonder of who Jesus is.

Is the BCD of Bible teaching and preaching relevant and practical?

Emphasizing mission. Since 1961, UBF’s strength has been our emphasis on mission. When I studied Genesis 1 three decades ago, I loved the catchphrase “Man = Mission.” I taught this in Genesis 1:1 Bible study repeatedly for a quarter of a century as my mission until a few years ago. I still treasure my life of mission and Bible teaching. I am as driven and passionate to teach the Bible today as I was when I became a Christian in 1980. The only subtle change is that I now wish to primarily “testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24), and to proclaim/preach “Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 1:23, 2:2) as my primary emphasis, rather than emphasizing mission imperatives. So, my point of Genesis is no longer mission, but Jesus (Jn 5:39,46).

A mission focus avoids Christ. When I emphasized mission (though it is biblical), I focused on verses that compelled me and others to strive for mission. “Deny myself and take up my cross” (Mt 16:24; Mk 8:34; Lk 9:23) was my favorite for 2 decades. So were “make disciples” (Mt 28:19) and “feed sheep” (Jn 21:15-17). Though I “denied myself, made disciples and fed sheep,” I failed to draw closer to Christ and felt burdened and stuck. Why?

A mission focus led to legalism, traditionalism and phariseeism. Emphasizing mission made me legalistic by emphasizing our UBF traditions, such as singing certain hymns, having a fixed format for worship service, emphasizing duty and faithfulness in methodologies, meetings and prayer topics and announcements, etc. In short, I became rigidly inflexible, sectarian and very intolerant of anything done in a “non-UBF way.” I so despised “mega-churches,” “non-discipling churches,” “nominal Christians,” “non-missional Christians,” etc, that I would trash them at every opportunity. I became a Pharisee of Pharisees.

Mission burdens; the gospel gives freedom and rest. From my experience, a repeated (over) emphasis on mission (while assuming the gospel) burdens and wears out Christians. I suffered from CFS: Christian Fatigue Syndrome, while pushing myself to “try harder!” and “don’t be lazy!” It also hinders spiritual growth and maturity. I had to rethink my Christian life. God helped me to find freedom (Gal 5:1) and rest (Mt 11:29) in the gospel after 25 years of Christian life. When I experience freedom and rest in the transforming power of the gospel, God energizes and empowers me to work harder and happier with passion and zeal. This is nothing but the grace of Jesus to me.

With all my heart, I still value and treasure my life of mission of making disciples. But Jesus is greater than my mission. Do you enjoy Jesus more than your mission?

What about the church? How can we be involved in community health? Wholeness includes physical, mental, social, and spiritual well being, which is “Shalom.” It extends God’s Kingdom and the message of Christ’s salvation for those who do not yet know it. It offers people choices (the choice to believe in God). It integrates words with works, proclamation with social action. In the past, monks formed hospitals. Florence Nightingale was a theologian as well as a nurse. In the UK, deaconesses and church workers were involved in healthcare until the state system took over.

70% of the British population call themselves Christian but only 6% attend church regularly.  Churches no longer get involved with health except for hospital chaplaincies. Nurses working for the health service are not allowed to pray or to talk about faith. How can people access spiritual care when they need it most? Our health service is struggling to cope with all the demands made on it by an aging population.

Parish Nursing Principles

1. The spiritual dimension is central to the practice. It also encompasses the physical, psychological, and social dimensions of nursing practice. This was developed by the Philosophy work group, then refined and endorsed by the first Educational Colloquium, Mundelein, Illinois, June 1994.

2. The parish nurse balances knowledge with skill, the sciences with theology and humanities, service with worship, and nursing care functions with pastoral care functions. The historic roots of the role are intertwined with those of monks, nuns, deacons, deaconesses, church nurses, traditional healers, and the nursing profession itself.

3. The focus of practice is the faith community and its ministry.  The parish nurse, in collaboration with the pastoral staff and congregational members, participates in the ongoing transformation of the faith community into a source of health and healing. Through partnership with other community health resources, parish nursing fosters new and creative responses to health concerns.

4. Parish nursing services are designed to build on and strengthen the capacities of individuals, families, and congregations to understand and care for one another in the light of their relationship to God, faith traditions, themselves, and the broader society. The practice holds that all persons are sacred and must be treated with respect and dignity. In response to this belief, the parish nurse assists and empowers individuals to become more active partners in the management of their personal health resources.

Parish Nursing:

• Whole person health care through the local church
• Led by a registered nurse
• Includes spiritual care
• Offered to people of all faiths and none
• Founded on Biblical principles, with particular reference to  the health and healing ministry of Jesus Christ

My involvement. I heard many testimonies of how people were helped spiritually during their illness. Just the simple visit and prayer with patients helps them heal better and come to a better relationship with God. Helen said in her presentation that we are God’s hands and feet with Christians uniting together in caring for the poor and needy. We have one Parish Nurse in all of Ukraine. She is an American. The organization became official by the government 3 weeks ago. I will be helping her. She will inform me of needs and our church will volunteer our services. We will be helping with hospice care, elderly homes, orphanages and soup houses. The need is so great. Christians everywhere have a great opportunity to help our fellow men just as our Lord Jesus did.

Is our UBF Preaching and Bible Teaching Christ-centered or Morals/Mission/Method-centered? During the teaching sessions Um found that “the more challenging to present and grasp were on contextualization and gospel preaching. (Gospel preaching) was particularly challenging because it breaks from the traditional method of preaching taught in many Korean seminaries. This somewhat moralistic preaching…tends to be the norm. The concept of preaching we presented of reading the scriptures canonically and then preaching from a redemptive-historical, christo-telic perspective is new and challenging.” Regarding gospel preaching, it is their hope that “the consideration of this different approach to preaching (redemptive-historical, christo-telic perspective) will lead many pastors to gain a deeper knowledge of the gospel and how to preach it to others.” Have UBF teachings emphasized morality, mission and methods rather than Christ and the gospel (1 Cor 2:2)? Is our teaching Christotelic (John 5:39)? Does our 50th UBF anniversary report book stress the keeping of our UBF methodology for the next 50 years rather than the gospel of God’s grace (Acts 20:24; 1 Cor 1:23)? Does our Bible study and preaching press for man’s response and responsibility rather than trust the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to God?

A Stagnant Church: Regarding the growth of Christianity “many now believe that the Korean church, on the whole, is in a season of decline. While Korea is often cited as being 30-35% Christian, the most recent census numbers indicate that that number has decreased to about 18%. While this is still a staggering number for Asia, the drastic decline is hard to ignore. Furthermore, it is now the case that less than 2% of 20-somethings regularly attend church, leading us to believe that Korea’s religious future may look quite a bit like that of other developed nations. Yes, there was a cultural moment 20 or 30 years ago when an attractional, come-and-see model produced results and numbers, but this is simply no longer the case.” Are the 20 somethings who attend UBF primarily 2nd gens, transfer Christians, or non-Christians?

An Inward Focus rather than an Outward Orientation is Deadly: In regards to the church and a gospel worldview “the prevailing approach tends to have an unbalanced emphasis on evangelism and church growth without as much emphasis on church health, how the gospel changes us, social justice and mercy, and the integration of faith and work in an achievement-oriented culture. The prevailing expectation is that the world will continue to come into the church, effectively creating an ingrown church that lacks the means to reach out. (This is not according to my outsider perspective, but according to my conversations with Korean leaders and pastors who acknowledge that the church’s influence in reaching the younger generation is slipping.)” Incurvatus in se (curved inward on oneself) is the sinful default of all Christians. Only a robust gospel can reverse this (2 Cor 5:15). Is UBF more interested in church growth or church health? Are we inward focused or outward focused?

Leaders Letting Go of Power and Control: With regards the future direction of the church, Um writes, “the church is in need of a thick gospel theological vision that shapes every dimension of its life and ministry. Churches need to be planted with sensibilities that will shift the directional flow from an outside-in to an inside-out gospel approach, that will turn the cultural idol of power accumulation upside-down, leading to radical power-sharing, which will avoid an overly triumphalistic approach to culture yet maintain a big vision for seeing the culture renewed with the gospel. Though all signs point to the church in Seoul experiencing a drastic and continual decline, it may be an opportunity for many new gospel churches to be planted—churches that will bring about gospel renewal and revival in new ways.” Do UBF leaders promote power accumulation or power-sharing? Is our directional flow outside-in, or an inside-out gospel approach? Do we promote authoritarian control over the church (Mark 10:42-44)? Does UBF have a triumphalistic approach to culture?

Has UBF been declining along with the church in Seoul? Do you agree with the observations, conclusions and proposals quoted above? How can gospel renewal and revival happen in UBF?

Bowing to alternative views that appeal to us has always been a temptation. We refuse to believe there is only one way of salvation, only one way to the Father. We choose to believe there are many paths to God.

Why? Because if there are many paths to God instead of just one, then we can willfully and selfishly choose the path we want. We can live the way we want, and never be held accountable by God. We can choose a religion that appeals to our own pride and vanity.

This quotation by evangelist Michael Youssef recently appeared in a friend’s Facebook post, and when I saw it, I instinctively felt a negative reaction. I hope you don’t mind humoring me as I try to explain myself, because this matters to me. I am not objecting to the content of Dr. Youssef’s words, but to the tone and attitude behind them as they are likely to be perceived in our present historical context. I think that his words are unlikely to accomplish what he hopes they will, which is to bring sinners to repentance.

Perhaps I seem arrogant to challenge a man who is, I am sure, very great and genuine. But I am bothered by his words and want to tell you why.

I do not deny that sinners are selfish, willfully disobedient and given over to Satan’s temptation. But as followers of Jesus, we ought to be willing to apply those rebukes to ourselves first. And God is using this postmodern generation to help us do just that.

A few years ago, Rick Richardson spoke at a UBF Staff Conference. One of his major points was that we are now living and evangelizing in a context where the church has a bad name. There is a deep breach of trust between Christians and non-Christians which we ignore at our own peril. I’ve spent years speaking to students on campus and have seen this firsthand. Over the last two centuries, the Church has damaged its witness by assuming a position of privilege and power. Christians’ overconfidence in their own positions, dogma, and practice has left many people hurt and wounded (even dead!) and deeply disillusioned by the Christian faith. In this historical context, shouldn’t our stance be one of humility and openness to criticism? But I don’t hear this in the quote by Mr. Youssef.

I recently read The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission by Leslie Newbigin (Revised edition, 1995). The meaning of the book’s title is this. As Christians, we have been brought into God’s kingdom. That kingdom in all its glory is already fully present and realized in Jesus. But among his followers in this world, that kingdom is still a well hidden secret, not yet apparent to the human eye. Jesus has died and risen and been bodily glorified, but we as yet have not. Until we have been glorified with Jesus, our relationship to this world must resemble the relationship that Jesus had when he physically walked among us: a relationship characterized by openness and meekness.

Newbigin bases his argument on the principle of election. Election has been widely misunderstood and misapplied. God’s elect are people chosen and called by God. But because they are sinners, they all too easily mistake their election for a kind of special status that makes them superior to the non-elect. This happened among Israelites in the Old Testament, and it happens within the Church today. All too easily, election morphs into a position of privilege and power. But the biblically accurate picture of election is a position not of privilege but of humility and suffering.

God’s elect are called to the way of the cross. Here we need to be very careful, because this too is often misunderstood. What is the way of the cross? Is it to obey a life of “mission,” of obedience to church practices, dogmas or even to Bible verses? At times it may include these, but the way of the cross is much more than these. To follow the way of the cross it to live with a deep sense of responsibility toward our fellow human beings. It is to live as a witness to the salvation we have been given in Jesus. This responsibility goes far beyond verbally stating certain uncompromising truths which are commonly used in evangelistic presentations. No, it is much, much harder than that. To follow the way of the cross, we have to actually live out and embody the uncompromising truths of the gospel.

The way of the cross, according to Newbigin, requires that we enter into mutual relationships of love with God and with the Other (the non-Christian). This relationship with the Other may be hard and long-suffering. It may take enormous investments of time, humility and love to lay the foundations of trust. Trust develops through open, reciprocal dialogue where privilege, power and position have no place. This is the nature of missionary encounter. It involves listening to, entering into the reality of, and even accepting the rebuke of the Other. You can’t enter into this kind of mutual dialogue with Other as anything but equals before the cross, as a living witness to Jesus who is there seeking the sinner.

Missionary encounter doesn’t happen when you hone your argument skills, puff up your chest, and boldly declare your uncompromising convictions, letting the chips fall where they may. That doesn’t resemble Jesus. Nor, for that matter, Peter or Paul.

This is how Newbigin (p. 182) describes the purpose of dialogue with people who do not share our faith:

This purpose can only be obedient witness to Jesus Christ. Any other purpose, any goal that subordinates the honor of Jesus Christ to some purpose derived from another source, is impossible for Christians. To accept such another purpose would involve a denial of the total Lordship of Jesus Christ. A Christian cannot try to evade the accusation that, for him or her, dialogue is part of obedient witness to Jesus Christ. But this does not mean that the purpose of dialogue is to persuade the non-Christian partner to accept the Christianity of the Christian partner. Its purpose is not that Christianity would acquire one more recruit. On the contrary, obedient witness to Christ means that whenever we with another person (Christian or not) enter into the presence of the cross, we are prepared to receive judgment and correction, to find that our Christianity hides within its appearance of obedience the reality of disobedience. Each meeting with a non-Christian partner in dialogue therefore puts my own Christianity at risk

(emphasis mine).

In other words, my own beliefs and practices of Christianity are never the same thing as Jesus himself. In a true missionary encounter, it is Jesus, not our proclamations of Jesus or anything else, who is at work. Evangelists are always in danger of talking about Jesus as if he is not there, reducing him to a belief system or a few Bible verses. Doctrinal positions may communicate certain things about Jesus, but they are not the same thing as Jesus. Jesus is a person. Sharing the gospel, his personhood, does not resemble a one-way transmission. It is not a monologue in which one party merely issues declarative statements and the other party merely receives them. True communication among persons always involves dialogue.

In another excellent book, Missional Church in Perspective by Craig Van Gelder and Dwight Zscheile (2011), the authors put it this way (p. 134):

The gospel is not merely a possession to be passed from one person to another, a kernel that exists in whatever cultural husk is at hand, but rather a living event in, between, and beyond us that changes both parties involved in the encounter.

The words of Michael Youssef which I quoted at the beginning of this article may be true in a certain propositional sense, but in our current historical context they fall far short of reflecting The Truth. I cannot imagine that Jesus himself would approach the Other who is reluctant, (yes, proud, but also) skeptical, disillusioned, and possibly hurt by Christians or the Church with what appears to be flippant disregard, labeling them as selfish, willfully disobedient and given to lies simply because they do not yet believe as he does. Jesus wants far more from us. Jesus requires us to let him love them through us, the forgiven ones, by listening carefully to them, hearing and healing the lack of trust which often lies at the root of their objections, and not assuming that we are the sole possessors of the truth whose job is to defend it all costs. Jesus would never be satisfied with an uncompromising proclamation of doctrines which makes dialogue impossible and drives the nonbeliever away. If Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, then he will be alive and present and active in our encounter with the Other if we allow it.

Near the end of Newbigin’s book (p. 181), he portrays the missionary encounter with a simple yet profound diagram.

The ascending staircases are all the various ways by which human beings have tried to better themselves and reach God. They represent “all the ethical and religious achievements that so richly adorn the cultures of humankind.” But in the center, at the bottom of every staircase, stands a symbol of a different kind. It is not a cultural or belief system but an historic event. This event involved a double exposure. God “exposed himself in total vulnerability” to human beings, allowing us to do to him whatever we pleased. And at the same time, he “exposed us as the beloved of God who are, even in our highest religion, the enemies of God.” This diagram conveys the paradoxical truth that God meets us at the bottom of our staircases, not at the top. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mk 2:17).

This same paradoxical truth applies in the missionary encounter. My system of Christianity as it has developed through history is one of the staircases. If I want to have an evangelistic meeting with a person of another faith, I need to come down from my staircase to the very bottom, to the base of the cross, where the two of us may stand on equal footing. There must be a self-emptying. “Christians do not meet their partners in dialogue as those who possess the truth and holiness of God but as those who bear witness to a truth and holiness that are God’s judgment on them and who are ready to hear the judgment spoken through the lips and life of their partner of another faith” (emphases mine).

“I am part of the fellowship of the unashamed. I have Holy Spirit power. The die is cast. I have stepped over the line. The decision has been made. I am a disciple of Jesus. I will not look back, let up, slow down, back away or be still.

“My past is redeemed. My present makes sense. My future is secure. I am finished and done with low-living, sight-walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, worldly talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals.

“I no longer need preeminence, prosperity, position, promotion, or popularity. I do not have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded or rewarded. I now live by faith, lean on God’s presence, walk by patience, am uplifted by prayer, and labor by power.

“My face is set, my gait is fast, my goal is heaven. My road is narrow, my way rough, my Guide reliable, my mission clear. I cannot be bought, compromised, detoured, lured away, turned back, deluded or delayed. I will not give up, shut up or let up. I will go on until Christ comes, and work until Christ stops me. I am a disciple of Jesus.”

Is this the language of your heart?

I would like to direct you to a good talk by Sinclair Ferguson (1948 – ).  He is a Scottish preacher from Glasgow, but now serves in South Carolina.  He’s a very good preacher.  I have listened to his series on Ephesians, James and 2 Timothy numerous times (they’re available at firstprescolumbia.org and sermonaudio.com).  John Piper, when asked who is the preacher he’d sit under, if he were not a church pastor himself, mentioned Sinclair Ferguson at once.  And Hughes Oliphant Old in his monumental 7-volume work wrote the following about Sinclair Ferguson:

“As I have said several times, I am not in the business of handing out the senior preaching prize, but there is no denying it—the preaching of Sinclair Ferguson is exemplary no matter on which side of the Atlantic one considers the question.”

In my experience, Sinclair Ferguson is not a rock-star preacher like John Piper at all.  He’s got a lovely Scottish accent, he is not loud, but is full of worship in preaching, and very serious.  He also wrote a number of good books published by Banner of Truth Trust and other publishing houses (most recent titles are “In Christ Alone” and “By Grace Alone”).

I first came to love this preacher because of the talk I’d like to point you to (and an interview with him by C.J. Mahaney).  And I also have a personal request for English-speaking brothers and sisters who could possibly help me transcribe these audios (2.5 hrs long, two parts) into text format.  Then I will translate them to Russian, for the edification of Russian ministers, too (not just in UBF).

Here is the link to the audios (please note that they were delivered in 2008, when Sinclair Ferguson became sixty):

“Preaching The Word. Reflections At Sixty – Part 1” by Sinclair B. Ferguson.

“Preaching The Word. Reflections At Sixty – Part 2” by Sinclair B. Ferguson.

If the links above don’t work, here is the master page:

Sinclair Ferguson audio master page

Even if you have no time to help with the transcript, please listen to this talk – it’s very good.  It’s not a mere autobiography, because you learn from a number of other good ministers, through Sinclair Ferguson’s spiritual lens.

What is marriage? Marriage is covenant keeping and commitment to Christ. Therefore, it is till death do us part. But the reality is that even as Christians, our marriages may be strongly biased by/based on “Something in the Way She Moves” (George Harrison, The Beatles, 1969), just like non-Christians. Then in the course of time, the song changes to “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’” (The Righteous Brothers, 1964). This may explain why Christians have similar divorce rates as non-Christians in the U.S.

Marriage by faith. I have taught “marriage by faith” for 25 years based on Gen 2:18-25. I coined the triple Ms (MMM): Man, Mission, Marriage by using 1) a negative and 2) a positive illustration: 1) Gen 6:1-6 where godless men married godlessly based on shallow sensual sexuality from one’s outward beauty. 2) Isaac’s “marriage by faith” with Rebekah in Gen 24:1-67. Though this “teaching” is not unbiblical, it is not the intent of the author to encourage Christians to marry like Isaac and Rebekah. To do so would be an incorrect or improper exegesis leading to a forced hermeneutics, which amounts to eisogesis. D. A. Carson, Professor of the NT at Trinity, said, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” (Enjoy!) This is what churches through out history, including ours, have been guilty of, often without realizing it. What then is the meaning of marriage? How should we Christians view marriage?

MMM to CCC. To answer this question in a short essay would be impossible. But may I propose and suggest that according to the Bible, “Marriage is primarily Covenant keeping and Commitment to Christ.” (If you like to add another “C” it would be “Marriage is Covenant keeping and Commitment and Conformity to Christ.”) I got these words and phrases from John Piper. So I will change MMM to CCC. What does this mean?

God’s Utmost Love for Us is Expressed Through a Happy Marriage. Without quoting biblical references I will attempt to explain what I believe is God’s ultimate purpose for marriage. It is primarily to help us realize God’s utmost love for us through our marriage. To those who have a good long lasting happy marriage, you know that your happiness with one another is just a foretaste and a shadow of our ultimate marriage with Christ, which will be fully realized when he comes again. When we flop into the arms of our spouse and lover in ecstasy, it will not even compare to flopping into the arms of Christ when Jesus returns. When we look into the loving eyes of our spouse, it is just a reminder of that day when we will see Jesus face to face with him loving us with the deepest and fondest of affection. A Christian’s genuinely happy marriage shows the whole world that what God truly wants for man is our ultimate happiness, which will be perfectly fulfilled and fully realized at the Second Coming. In the meantime, a happy Christian marriage is a sign to the world and to the happy Christian couple that God’s love for us is immensely great.

God Redeems Marriage and Love Through Christ. Previously, I explained how in UBF we have tended to emphasize that Man Equals Mission. Though it is true that God created man and even marriage for mission, it is really not the primary purpose for creating man. God created man primarily to enjoy the love of God and the love of one another. This is what Jesus said (Matt 22:37-39). But we failed to love God and others/our own spouses, because of our sins of selfishness and self-centeredness, even as Christians. Only a restored and ongoing relationship with the Father, through his Son, by the work of the Spirit, are we able to love God and others. Thus, a loving and happy husband wife relationship and friendship can only be accomplished through the redeeming work of Christ on the cross. (Thus, “unhappy Christian marriages,” which is an oxymoron, occur when Christ is not central in the marriage or in their relationship.)

Commit to our Covenant with Christ by Committing to Marriage. Therefore, each individual Christian’s committed covenant keeping with Christ is absolutely foundational to a happy marriage. If Jesus’ love for me does not move my heart to tears and thanksgiving, I will not be able to love my wife (not to mention others) in a way that will build her up and sanctify her and make her more and more beautiful and glorious (Eph 5:25-27). When I sacrificially love, protect, provide for and treasure my wife (even imperfectly) as Christ loved the church (perfectly), I will begin to fulfill my mission as a man, a husband, a father and a steward of the world by displaying the love and glory of Christ through my marriage and my family. That is why the Apostle Paul’s requirement for elders and leaders in the church is how well they are managing their own family and household (1 Tim 3:4-5; Tit 1:6).

Would you teach marriage as covenant keeping and commitment to Christ? Should we emphasize that marriage is for mission, which Bible commentators do not do?

How am I able to be away from my job for three months? By the grace of God, and by the grace of my wife, God has enabled me to be semi-retired. I have a medical practice in Chicago for a decade with 3 doctors working for me. My wife has managed the practice administratively. Recently, my son Paul began to work for us, and he has been a tremendous help in relieving my wife’s burden. In a sense, I worked myself out of a job, which is a good thing, I think.

How did I come to make such a decision? When I saw so many students come for Bible study to the two new church plants in Antipolo and the University of the East (both in Manila), God prompted my heart. The primary test would be my wife’s approval. I thought that if I asked her about staying in Manila for many months, she would say, “Are you crazy!” Instead, to my shock, she said, “I felt the same way as well.”

What would I do there? I told Dr. William that I would not take over the ministry or lead the ministry. He has done a far better job than I ever could. So, this is a sort of three-month sabbatical to read, study, pray, share life and fellowship, and to become a part of their vibrant ministry.

What about my ministry at West Loop? We have eight other godly families at West Loop UBF, including with Rhoel and Elena, who are all the practical stewards of the ministry. Since her inception in January 2008, my prayer was always for the ministry to run without me, for all the leaders are such pure hearted responsible people, who are far better than I. Likely, I am working myself out of a job here as well. Praise the Lord!

Why am I doing this? Partly, it is to visit my 94-year old mom in Malaysia more easily. It is a day’s flight from Chicago, but only a three and a half hour flight from Manila. Mainly, I have been reflecting on two verses for 2011. “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14). “…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Phil 2:12-13). This is my prayer and pursuit of my upward heavenly calling in Christ, and the working out of my salvation with fear and trembling.

What next? I don’t know. My fear is that I am going to be lonely, because I have never been separated from my wife for more than three weeks over the last 30 years of our insanely happy marriage.

Do pray for me. And come visit if you are able to. Brendan Daley and 3 kids of John and Maria Peace are presently there. You will live in relative poverty, but you will have a jolly good time!

I began this series by asking what happens when our understanding of Scripture is contradicted by the leading of the Holy Spirit. It is easy for us to convince ourselves that we are holding to “biblical” values and principles simply because we belong to a ministry that strongly emphasizes Bible study, and yet miss what God is saying to us here and now. The epistle to the Hebrews contains a vivid description of how the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with Scripture (Hebrews 4:12-13, NIV):

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

For the Bible to do its work, we must do more than just try to understand the meaning of the written word. We need to come in the presence the living Word and allow him to expose unpleasant truths about ourselves. In the King James Version, “laid bare” is rendered as “naked.” Studying the Bible while you are naked sounds rather uncomfortable. Unless our Bible study is somewhat uncomfortable, we are not approaching Scripture as we ought. In the next chapter, the author delivers a stinging rebuke to his readers (Hebrews 5:11, The Message):

I have a lot more to say about this, but it is hard to get it across to you since you’ve picked up this bad habit of not listening.

There are countless bad habits that keep us from listening to the voice of God. The bad habit of pulling verses and passages out of context to support our pre-existing positions. Using the Bible to affirm our identity and make us think we are better than others. Treating the Bible as a collection of timeless principles and moral examples rather than the great metanarrative of history culminating in the person and work of Jesus. From my own experience, I know how easy it is to fall into a pattern of bad habits which, while we are interacting with Scripture, allows us to remain distant from Jesus. As Jesus said in John 5:39-40:

You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

The Spirit wants to awaken us out of complacency into a dynamic, life-giving relationship with Christ. He wants to refresh our mission, giving us a renewed understanding of the gospel and how to participate in missio Dei.

As the 50^th anniversary of UBF approaches, I have mixed feelings about what has been happening in our ministry. I am grateful for what God has done among us thus far, but I am apprehensive about the talk about preserving our “spiritual heritage” and passing on “UBF principles” to the next generation. The reason I am apprehensive is that, when leaders articulate what the heritage and principles are, it sounds like a description of the fruit of the gospel work among the first generation of UBF members, not the seed that generated that fruit.

The seed is, of course, the gospel. The historical facts of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, his ascension, lordship and Second Coming, are the universal message that must be proclaimed by the Church in every time and place. The call to believe this message and personally follow the risen Christ are the core of the universal Christian witness. The fruit is the renewal of persons and restoration of relationships seen among those who receive the gospel message, the visible work of the Holy Spirit who dwells in the fellowship of believers.

If someone has come to a saving faith in Christ, evidence of that faith must appear in the person’s life in the form of visible fruit (Heb 6:8; Jas 2:26). But that visible fruit may look very different from one person to another and from one community to another. Profound differences began to appear within the first generation after Christ. The first disciples of Jesus were Jews, and they expressed their gospel faith in visible ways within the context of distinctly Jewish lifestyle. But when Gentiles received the gospel message, they began to live out their faith differently. This led to a crisis around 50 A.D. culminating in the Jerusalem Council in Acts chapter 15, when distinctions between Jewish and Gentile Christians were openly acknowledged and blessed. If the apostles had decided to impose Jewish life-patterns upon Gentile Christians, the growth that the Church experienced in its first two decades would have been unsustainable. The key to continued growth was for the apostles to simultaneously hold on to the historic message of salvation through Christ alone and let go of their implicit, culture-bound notions and expectations about what the “ideal” Christian life should look like, allowing the Holy Spirit to work creatively among new converts.

Too many evangelistic movements have fallen into the trap of trying to sustain activities that are inherently unsustainable. When the Spirit works powerfully in a particular time and place, those who are changed by it may naturally begin to think that this is how it’s supposed to be in other times and places. There is a very fine line between (a) giving thanks to God for what he has done and faithfully building upon it, and (b) canonizing the formative experience of the evangelistic movement by constructing a system of theology, principles, and rules around it in an attempt to perpetuate it. Those who cross this line try to absolutize what is provisional and, despite good intentions, obscure the gospel message and stifle the work of the Spirit among those who would come after them.

The actual fruit of the gospel consists of inward qualities (love, joy, peace, etc.) which cannot be directly observed (Gal 5:22-23). These inward qualities are universal, but their outward manifestations are context-specific and culturally conditioned. During the last century, conservative evangelicals in the United States promoted “Christian” values by demanding that church members abstain from smoking, drinking, gambling and dancing. Interestingly, none of these activities is specifically prohibited in the Bible; Christians in the first century wrestled with a different set of moral issues and dilemmas. A personal decision to refrain from smoking, drinking, gambling or dancing may be an appropriate response to the gospel in some contexts, but these are not timeless laws, and treating them as such can produce unintended negative consequences for individuals, congregations and society at large. When standards like these are imposed as a matter of policy, disciples may adhere to them, but their adherence may not be the evidence of real inner transformation; rather, it will appear through self effort, relationship pressure, cultural expectations and church rules. It will be counterfeit fruit, not the result of genuine Christian spirituality, and its benefits will not last.

When missionaries bring the gospel message into a new culture, they also carry tacit notions of how an ideal Christian disciple should look and act. It is almost inevitable that missionaries will impose many culture-bound standards and expectations upon their disciples. As the disciples mature and begin to exercise independent faith and judgment, they begin to challenge the missionaries’ standards with ideas of their own, leading to tensions and conflicts within a ministry. Appeals to the Bible may not solve the problem, because each one can make a compelling case (in their own minds, at least) that the Bible is on their side. The fundamental question being raised is this: Who determines what the ethical implications of the gospel are in that specific time and place? Should the missionaries decide? Or should the native disciples decide?

The correct answer, I believe, is neither. In a genuine gospel ministry, the Holy Spirit must decide. Fruit-bearing is the prerogative of the Spirit who comes upon each believer in Christ, young and old, male and female, and upon the Church as a whole (Acts 2:16-18). The work of the Spirit is mysterious, unpredictable and surprising. He cannot be treated in a mechanical fashion or be reduced to rules, principles or methods, because he is a person. There is no greater need among us now than to become personally acquainted with Holy Spirit and discern what he doing in this present generation among missionaries’ children and among native disciples, so that this work may be encouraged and blessed.

In a nutshell, Paul says that God hardened the hearts of most first-century Jews to reject the gospel message of righteousness by faith. The remnant who accepted the gospel did so by the grace of God alone. And the Gentiles who accepted the message did so by the grace of God alone. Paul also expressed his hope that someday the Jews, seeing God’s work among the Gentiles, would be aroused to envy, believe the gospel and be saved.

Why did God choose to work this way? Paul’s analysis suggests the following.

• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then Christianity would have been so closely bound to Jewish lifestyles and traditions that the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles would have been hindered, and the message of salvation by grace alone would have been watered down.
• If most of the first-century Jews had accepted Christ, then they could think it was their superior character, discipline, keeping of the law, etc. that allowed them to fulfill their purpose as the chosen people. The fact that only a remnant accepted Christ was a mark of shame upon the Jewish Christians which humbled them, making the remnant less arrogant and less likely to impose their own cultural standards upon the Gentiles (although some of them still tried).
• The Gentiles who received the gospel from the Jewish remnant also had to be extra careful not to think of themselves as superior in any way, because if God did not spare arrogant Jews, he would not spare arrogant Gentiles either.
• If and when the gospel ultimately flows from the Gentiles back to the Jews, it will again be an act of saving grace by God’s own choosing.

Another powerful description of election is found near the beginning of 1 Corinthians, where Paul notes that neither Jews nor Gentiles were naturally inclined to accept the gospel (1Co 1:22-24):

Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Note the use of the word called. He uses the same term again a few verses later: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called” (1Co 1:26). That term emphasizes that it was God who, by his divine sovereignty, selected and called the believers in Corinth out from their respective cultural groups to follow Christ. It was not their own choice, their own faith, their own character, their own anything. It was only because of him that they became Christians, and so they have absolutely no reason to boast (1Co 1:30-31). This sense of being called by Christ, and not approaching him by their own merit or choosing, was so pervasive among the early Christians that it is reflected in the name of their community. The Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as “church,” literally means, “ones who were called out.”

What does Paul’s teaching on election imply for the spread of the gospel and missionary work today? Here are three practical lessons that I draw from it.

First, it underscores the fact that evangelism is not driven by human planning, vision, or zeal, but is undertaken by God’s initiative and the work of the Holy Spirit.

There is a short passage in the middle of Romans chapter 10 where Paul writes (Ro 10:14-15):

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

This paragraph has often been interpreted as an exhortation to evangelism. Countless pastors have quoted these verses to urge their members to volunteer, go out, and carry the gospel to an unbelieving world so that they too can have “beautiful feet.” In the context of Romans 9-11, however, this is not an exhortation to evangelism. It is an explanation of why a remnant was chosen out of Israel to believe in Jesus. The original disciples of Jesus didn’t volunteer; they were called by Jesus and then sent by him and the Holy Spirit to the preach the gospel to the rest of Israel, who for the most part rejected the message because God had hardened their hearts. And the hardening of their hearts was part of God’s plan!

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that evangelism is unnecessary. It is necessary. But it is God who calls and sends some to evangelize, and it is God who manages the outcomes, either positive or negative, and uses them for his own mysterious salvation purpose. To think that we can decide to accept a vision and go out and evangelize, and that we will be successful if we only try hard enough, pray long enough, and use the correct methods, then we are deluding ourselves. God’s interest is to save the nations, not to expand our churches and ministries. He is more than willing to allow us to fail, to chasten us, to humble us, etc. if necessary to show us the world that no group is intrinsically privileged, that salvation comes to everyone by the grace of God alone. He is more than willing to use poor, ineffective, arrogant, or ethnocentric evangelism to reveal the weaknesses of evangelists, churches and Christians and show the world that everyone, including all missionaries and all religious leaders, are sinners not just in theory, but in actuality. He is not interested in helping unrepentant Christians to save face. He wants to show off the amazing grace of his Son, not to dazzle people by the greatness of us.

Second, it shows that God’s mission travels in all directions.

God did not intend for the gospel to travel just from Jews to Gentiles. His plan was for the gospel to start with a remnant of Israel, to flow out the Gentiles, and then ultimately come back to Israel. If the gospel were to flow in one direction only, then it would elevate certain persons and groups to privileged status over others. But the gospel flows in all directions. As missionaries evangelize disciples, they must allow themselves to be re-evangelized by the disciples. This makes the concept of a missionary-sending nation somewhat dubious. Rather than praying for any nation to be “a missionary-sending nation,” it would be more reasonable to envision “a gospel-proclaiming and a gospel-receiving nation.” A church that sends missionaries overseas should not imagine itself to be just a power-station for mission, always giving but never receiving, insulating itself and not allowing itself to be influenced by the Christianity of the converts. As the Church welcomes new believers into the fold, it must itself be transformed. God is always interested in using the various parts of the Body of Christ to evangelize, renew and reform other parts. If any part seeks to reform another, it had better be prepared to be reformed right back.

In part 4 of this series, I discussed the problems with the “mission-station” strategy in which foreigners enter a new culture, set up a church that resembles the one from back home, and attempt to raise disciples in their own image. Donald A. McGavran (1897-1990), the missionary and scholar who coined this term, criticized the mission-station strategy on the grounds that it is ineffective and inhibits church growth. Although I believe his arguments have merit, I do not consider slow growth to be the main reason why Christians must avoid establishing mission stations. We must avoid doing so because this approach conflicts with what the New Testament teaches about election and undermines the gospel of salvation by grace alone.

Third, it underscores the need for great humility – not a false modesty, but a true acknowledgement of our own spiritual poverty – in the way we do apologetics, evangelism and discipleship.

Paul’s teaching about election leads explicitly to the conclusion that at no point may any Christian individual or group think of themselves as superior to any believer or nonbeliever. This does not mean that there is not a proper time for some to teach and others to learn. Indeed, election means that some are called by God to positions of teaching. But the role of teacher carries a grave responsibility to examine himself to uncover the weaknesses of himself and the group from which he comes. As Paul warned in Romans 2:17-20:

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

We have no business evangelizing others if we are not simultaneously allowing ourselves to be evangelized by the message we are preaching and by the work of the Holy Spirit among those we are attempting to reach. At no point does evangelism depend on our own effort, faithfulness, righteousness or obedience, because the gospel comes to all not because of our wonderful goodness, but only despite our horrible badness. And if our efforts do not produce the desired result, if the message we preach is rejected, what are we to conclude? Lesslie Newbigin (as quoted by Bosch in Transforming Mission, p. 413) wrote:

I can never be so confident of the purity and authenticity of my witness that I can know that the person who rejects my witness has rejected Jesus. I am witness to him who is both utterly holy and utterly gracious. His holiness and grace are as far above my comprehension as they are above that of my hearer.

In the next, and final, article of this series, I will pick up a question that was left unanswered at the end of part 4: Who decides the ethical implications of th gospel?

Reading Romans to learn about justification by faith is a useful exercise. But it is also helpful to take off those Reformation goggles to see what Paul was actually saying to Roman Christians in the first century. If we do so, then we may find that the central teaching of Romans is not justification by faith. Rather, I believe we will find that the key idea is divine election.

Allusions to election appear in the very first verse: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God…” (Ro 1:1). Notice the terms “called” and “set apart.” Paul’s status as an apostle and servant of Christ were not attained by virtue, dedication, hard work, values, character, etc. but were given to him as a gift of pure grace. It was God who called him and set him apart from his fellow Jews to serve the gospel rather than promoting Jewish law, custom and tradition.

Paul was writing to a church that he did not personally found. His letter was intended to give them a rich theological and historical perspective on the gospel, to help them better understand their identity as a mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile Christians. Comparisons and contrasts between Jews and Gentiles are made throughout the book, in virtually every chapter. Vast differences existed between these two groups with regard to history, culture, lifestyle and conscience. Paul did not want them to ignore those differences, but to pay attention to them, wrestle with them, and understand God’s purpose in bringing these polar opposites together in light of missio Dei.

The thesis of the first half of the book (Chapters 1-8) is that a divine message of salvation has now been revealed, a message that can save Jew and Gentile alike, and that both groups are saved in exactly the same way: through a righteousness that comes by faith (1:16-17). Both groups are sinful and deserving of God’s judgment, but in different ways and for different reasons. Gentiles have fallen into blatant godlessness evidenced by idolatry, sexual immorality, violence, and depravity (1:18-32). Jews have violated God’s covenant with them by breaking the laws that he gave them (2:17-29). Neither group has the right to point a finger of judgment at the other, because neither one is repentant (2:1-5). But Jesus Christ came to save both Jew and Gentile in the same way, granting them righteousness that comes by faith (3:21-26). God’s manner of salvation makes it impossible for anyone to boast (3:27). This gospel of righteousness is not new; it is found in the Old Testament, through the accounts of Abraham and David (chapter 4). Jesus is the new Adam who recreates the entire human race (chapter 5). Anyone who believes Christ is united with him in his death and resurrection, and the risen Christ comes alive in him, giving him a new life (chapter 6). Christians are not bound by law, but have been freed to live by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit accomplishes what the law was powerless to do: bring our dead souls to life, give us victory over sin (chapters 7-8).

Partway through this treatise on the gospel is a defense of the doctrine of election (3:1-8). Paul explains that even though the Jews failed to uphold their covenant, God’s purpose for them did not fail. He hints that human unfaithfulness is foreseen by God and is ultimately used for his glory, but that fact does not absolve anyone of genuine guilt. He picks up this theme again in chapters 9-11, where he wrestles with a subject that for him was intensely personal and painful: the Jews’ overwhelming rejection of the gospel.

If we look to Romans chapters 9-11 to answer all of our questions about Calvinism versus Arminianism, we will be disappointed. Paul was not constructing a theological system. His purpose was limited to making sense of what God had done, was doing, and will do with his chosen people, to help Jewish and Gentile Christians understand their respective positions in God’s redemptive history.

In chapter 9, Paul shares his deep anguish over the Israel’s rejection of the gospel. Despite their glorious spiritual heritage as God’s chosen people, they rejected God’s Messiah. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone,” because they pursued righteousness through the conditional, failed covenant of Mosaic law rather than the unconditional Abrahamic covenant of righteousness by faith. God foresaw all their failure and their future rejection of Christ, yet he patiently bore with them for many centuries because he had a different purpose for them. His purpose was to raise up through them a faithful remnant to carry the gospel to his elect among the Jews, and to use the Jews’ majority rejection of Christ to propel the gospel out to the Gentiles.

In the middle of chapter 9, Paul makes a startling claim. He says that underlying reason why the majority of Jews rejected the gospel is that God hardened their hearts. He compares the Israelites to Pharaoh, of whom it is said numerous times (I counted ten times in Exodus chapters 4-14) that God hardened his heart against the message of Moses. Paul repeats the claim in chapter 11, using references from Deuteronomy 29 and Isaiah 29 to show that “God gave them a spirit of stupor” so that they would reject the message.

Paul’s claim is difficult for us to swallow, because it deeply conflicts with our modernistic notions of fairness, freedom, and autonomy of the individual human person. It was also confusing for Christians in the first century, but for different reasons. It conflicted with their understanding of the Old Testament. How could they reconcile this reasoning with God’s numerous promises to Israel? Had God changed his mind and rejected those whom he had chosen? Paul offered some clarifications to help his readers, and it is useful to examine them even if they do not put to rest all the questions and concerns of 21^st century evangelicals. First, Paul notes that “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (9:6). It is not the physical descendents of Abraham who are reckoned as God’s children, but those among them who accepted his promise of blessing. Second, he says that even if God hardens someone’s heart, it does not absolve them of personal responsibility (9:19-21). Third, even though most of the Jews had at present rejected God’s offer, they had not stumbled beyond recovery (11:11). All of God’s promises throughout the Old Testament still stood; his gifts and promises were irrevocable, which led Paul to believe that the hardening of their hearts was temporary. He still hoped that at some point in the future, many of them would eventually come back into a saving relationship with God, because God’s desire was to show mercy to all (11:25-32). Realizing that this is still very difficult to understand, that we do not at present see exactly what God is doing but must trust his judgments, Paul consigns these teachings to the realm of mystery and exclaims, “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (11:33-36).

Editors of the NIV placed Romans 11:25-32 under a section title, “All Israel Will Be Saved.” Some evangelicals believe that all Jews will ultimately receive salvation, and this is tied to various beliefs about the future of the nation of Israel. Although I do not dismiss these theories, I remain skeptical because I do not know the extent to which Paul’s use of the term “Israel” relates to any modern-day ethnic or religious group or geopolitical entity. Like Paul, I am happy to place this in a file cabinet under “mysterious teachings of the Bible.” I don’t know what the future holds for Israel, but I suspect that however it pans out, everyone will be surprised. (That’s why I call myself a pan-millennialist.)

Although Paul doesn’t answer many of our questions about predestination, he does give us a definitive understanding of God’s overall purpose in election, and he does present a “practical application” of this teaching to his first-century readers. He tells them that, whether they are Jews or Gentiles, their acceptance of the gospel did not “depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy” (9:16). The historic covenant of law had to fail prior to the coming of the gospel; if it did not, it would have undermined God’s plan to grant people righteousness by faith alone (9:30-33). If the people of Israel had not rejected Christ, then Jewish missionaries who carried the gospel to the Gentiles could still claim ethnic or religious superiority over the people they were evangelizing. The rejection of the gospel by the Jews underscored the fact that the minority, the remnant who accepted the gospel, were chosen not because of their superior character or effort or achievements but by the grace of God alone (11:1-6). And the Gentiles who received the gospel from the Jewish remnant had no right to boast either, because they too were chosen by grace alone (11:13-21). At no point should anyone in Christ feel smug or self-assured in their salvation. No one in the church has achieved standing before God on the basis any decision they have made or any action that they have taken; their standing has always been by grace alone, and if they deny that, they themselves will be cut off (11:22).

The principle of election should foster in everyone a deep, heartfelt gratitude toward God and humility before other people, as Paul says in the next chapter: “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you” (12:3). Although we have been saved by faith, the faith itself is a gift from God. Whether we think of ourselves as having weak faith, strong faith, or no faith, no Christian individual or group at any time has any basis for pride over anyone else, because whatever faith they have was distributed to them by God as an undeserved gift.

This understanding of election leads us inevitably to a rule of love, not a rule of law, as the sole ethic of the Christian life. A Christian must not by driven by desire to achieve a superior status or blessing from God on the basis of anything he is or does; such motivations are incompatible with the gospel. The sole motivation for everything we do must be love for God, for our neighbor, and for our enemy (12:9-21). Love is the fulfillment of the law (13:8-10). Christians who understand election will not pass judgment on one another. Those who seem to be “strong” will never judge those who seem “weak,” or vice-versa, because God accepts all regardless of strength or weakness (14:1-22).

And in a stunning reversal of common sense, Paul uses the term “weak” in chapter 14 to refer to Jewish Christians who, because of their consciences, felt compelled to adhere to dietary and religious laws. I’ll bet that those believers did not consider themselves to be weak. From childhood, they had been trained to think of adhering to their laws (which, by the way, were biblically based) as a sign of holiness, discipline and purity. Paul characterized their reliance upon those disciplines as a weakness and freedom from those laws as strength. But he warned those who were free to be mindful of those who were not. He urged everyone not to impose their moral scruples upon one another, but to respect one another’s consciences, to love one another and live in peace as demonstrated by unity-in-diversity.

Historians have called the early Church “a sociological impossibility.” This description is very accurate. There was no human way for Jews and Gentiles, who in so many ways were polar opposites, to come together as friends and form a loving community. But it happened in the first century, and the reason why it happened is found in the book of Romans. Understanding the doctrine of divine election enabled the Jewish and Gentile Christians to embrace their differences and see why God had put them together in the same church.

Similarly, the world mission command of Acts 1:8 functions as an outline for Acts, and its true meaning cannot be discerned apart from the entire book. As I have previously noted, this verse is not a command but a promise. Jesus said to his apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” What Jesus promised came to pass. The apostles became witnesses of the risen Christ, and the gospel did go out from them to Jerusalem, to all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. As I explained in part 5 of this series, this propagation of the gospel did not come about through the apostles’ visionary planning, effort and zeal. It happened just as Jesus said it would, through the power and initiative of the Holy Spirit.

The preeminent role of the Holy Spirit in missio Dei is one of the great underlying themes of the book of Acts through which we are to interpret the world mission “command” of Acts 1:8.

As I re-read the book of Acts last month, another underlying theme caught my attention. This theme was so obvious that I was shocked that I hadn’t noticed it before. In addition to the work of the Holy Spirit among the apostles, there was another powerful force at work that drove the gospel out from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Can you guess what it was?

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, here’s the answer: It was the rejection of Christ by the Jews.

Not all the Jews rejected Jesus, of course. All of the apostles were Jews. The original 120 disciples, and the 3,000 who were baptized on the day of Pentecost, were overwhelmingly if not exclusively Jewish. So it would be more correct to say that it was the acceptance of Christ by a minority of Jews, combined with the rejection of Christ by the majority, that carried the gospel to the Gentiles.

The author of Acts does not present the Jews’ rejection of Christ as an incidental detail, but as a key piece of the mysterious puzzle of missio Dei. Here is some evidence.

In Peter’s evangelistic message on the day of Pentecost, he told his audience, “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross” (Acts 2:23). Peter did not absolve the people of their responsibility; he declared them to be culpable in Jesus’ death. But he also explained that God deliberately planned for this to happen. It was an integral part of his glorification, a necessary step for him to become our rejected, crucified, risen Messiah.

After the day of Pentecost, the Jewish authorities were not able to stop the apostles from preaching the resurrection of Christ; the apostles had become too popular, and the good works that God was doing through them were undeniable (chapter 4). But a fresh wave of Jewish opposition arose when Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew who had been appointed by the apostles to a position of leadership along with six other Hellenistic Jews, began to preach and perform miraculous signs. Stephen’s ministry (chapter 6) and speech before the Sanhedrin (chapter 7) infuriated the religious leaders and the populace of Jerusalem. In the middle of Stephen’s speech, they dragged him out of court and stoned him to death. The stoning of Stephen was a gross violation of civil and religious law; he had not been convicted of any crime.

Why did Stephen’s speech infuriate them so much? That is a truly interesting question. To answer it well would require a careful exegesis of his speech, which is beyond the scope of this article. But two features of the speech stand out. First, Stephen pointed out that God does not dwell in any building made by human hands (Acts 7:48). He greatly diminished the importance of the temple, inferring that Jerusalem was no longer (and, in truth, never had been) the focus of God’s redemptive history. Second, he declared that the Jews had failed all along to keep the covenant of law that God had given them. All along they been resisting the work of the Holy Spirit, and the crucifixion of Jesus was just the latest and most blatant example of their rejection of God’s purpose for them (Acts 7:51-53). To hear these words from the mouth Hellenistic Jew – and Hellenistic Jews were generally regarded by the Hebraic Jews as worldly, compromised, too liberal in their lifestyles, etc. – struck at the heart of their religious identity. It brought to the surface huge amount of conflict, anger and resentment.

After the murder of Stephen – and it is correctly called a murder, because due process was not followed – a wave of violent opposition broke out against the Jerusalem church, and everyone except the apostles was driven out of the city. As a direct consequence of this persecution, the gospel went out to Judea and Samaria. Philip, another one of the seven Hellenistic church leaders, was instrumental in the evangelization of Samaria (chapter 8). In a very ironic twist, it is Saul of Tarsus, the future Apostle Paul, who is a ringleader in the persecution effort. Even before Paul’s conversion, he was already being used as God’s a divinely elected instrument to drive the gospel toward the Gentiles.

When the Holy Spirit sent Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey, they traveled to Cyprus and regions of modern-day Turkey (chapters 13-14). They intentionally focused their efforts on the Jewish community, preaching in synagogues on the Sabbath. Paul believed that it was God’s plan for the Jews, God’s chosen people, to receive the gospel first (Romans 1:16). A few Jews would respond favorably, but most would reject it. However, the message would be received with great enthusiasm by the God-fearing Gentiles who had not taken the step of conversion to Judaism by being circumcised. This became a recurrent pattern throughout Paul’s missionary journeys.

In hindsight, we can say that the rejection of the gospel by a majority of the Jews was necessary for the Church to develop, both sociologically and theologically. If large numbers of Jews had embraced the message, then Christianity could never have become divorced from Jewish custom and tradition, and a Torah-free gospel could not have been preached throughout the world. The schism in the Jewish community created by the gospel forced the leaders of the early Church to take stock of their theology and clarify what the gospel is truly about (chapter 15). But this rift caused a great deal of personal angst, heartache and pain among the Jewish believers. The rejection of the gospel by the Jewish majority, and the tension between Jewish and Gentile elements in forging the identity of the Church, is one of the most salient issues on the minds of the writers of the New Testament. It strongly colors all four of the gospels and many of the epistles. Given the overwhelming hardness of the Jews toward the gospel, and the rapid spread of the faith among the Gentiles, what was God doing, and what should the Church leaders now be doing? What would the Church look like after one, two, or three generations? Was the apostolic mission to the Jews now finished?

Nowhere is this struggle to understand what God was doing more evident than in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. It is the focus of chapters 9-11, which are difficult to understand but regarded by many scholars as the heart of the book. We will discuss that in the next installment.

The word elect simply means “chosen.” In the Old Testament, God chose the people of Israel and made a special relationship with them. If we examine how this choice is portrayed, two aspects are emphasized. First, the Israelites were not chosen because of their inherent goodness; election came to them by grace alone. Second, election did not confer on them any claim of superior status before God. On the contrary, their election placed them in a position of responsibility and servantship toward other nations. Their failure to live up to God’s covenant led to captivity and humiliation, and that should have further prepared them to receive the gospel of salvation by grace.

Election is also a powerful theme throughout the New Testament. We see it in the interaction between Jesus and his disciples. First-century Jewish society had a well developed culture of discipleship. Young men would gather around popular rabbis to learn the Torah with hopes of becoming rabbis themselves. It was always the disciple who chose the rabbi and initiated the relationship. But Jesus turned the tables completely around. He approached young men of his own choosing and commanded them to follow him. Of course, the disciples had to willingly respond. But they were not the initiators. Jesus called, they followed.

When Jesus appointed the Twelve apostles, he chose the ones he wanted (Mark 3:13). Jesus said to the Twelve, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit…” (John 15:16). When others tried to follow Jesus as the apostles did, Jesus sometimes discouraged them from doing so (Mark 5:19).

Why did Jesus choose these particular men? They had no special education, pedigree or obvious qualifications that set them apart from the rest. They were just regular people from Galilee. It seems that they were chosen specifically because of their ordinariness, to show the world that their election was by grace alone. Even after they were chosen, they did not demonstrate great virtue or faithfulness. Throughout the gospel accounts, their weaknesses are continually laid bare. They abandoned and betrayed Jesus in his hour of need. Their status as apostles was truly undeserved. From start to finish, it was Jesus who bore with them, forgave them and upheld them by grace.

Jesus chose them to be with him and to observe him, and to ultimately become the witnesses of his death and resurrection (Mark 1:14, Acts 1:8). They were to preach the gospel to the whole world (Mark 16:15). Yet Peter, despite his interaction with Cornelius in Acts chapter 10, continued to minister almost exclusively to the Jews (Gal 2:7-8). Peter and the other apostles had great difficulty associating with Gentiles. They had been taught from childhood that Gentile ways were inherently unclean. The idea of preaching a Torah-free gospel seemed alien to them; they just couldn’t envision an authentic Gentile Christian lifestyle.

When the gospel finally broke through to the Gentiles, it happened through the most unlikely person. Saul of Tarsus had distinguished himself among the Pharisees for his ultra-strict keeping of the law (Philippians 3:4-6). He had zealously persecuted the Church because he considered the Christians to be a threat to Jewish religious supremacy. But the risen Christ personally appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus. Jesus chose him to be his instrument to carry his name to the Gentiles, a mission that Saul would never have chosen for himself (Acts 9:15). The calling of Saul, and his transformation into the Apostle Paul, is another powerful picture of God’s election. Once again, it appears that God chose Paul for this task to demonstrate that his gospel comes to all purely by grace.

Examining the flow of God’s salvation history throughout the Old and New Testaments, it becomes unmistakably clear that his salvation comes to individuals and nations not because of the efforts and virtues of God’s human accomplices but despite them. From start to finish, the mission belongs to God, not to people.

The early Christians knew this principle. The Latin word missio, from which we derive mission, was a theological term for the Father sending the Son into the world, and for the Father and Son sending the Holy Spirit. Mission is an intrinsic part of God’s character. In modern times, however, mission has come to be understood as activity that individuals and churches undertake by their own choosing and initiative. All too often, mission is now seen as a human effort to carry the gospel to the lost people of the world.

In the highly acclaimed book Transforming Mission, David Bosch described how Protestant missionary efforts over the last two centuries have been characterized by a spirit of “voluntarism.” This is exactly what one would expect in a historical period marked by industrialization, free enterprise and scientific positivism. Christians spoke of “the evangelization of the world in this generation!” That phrase became the motto of the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) of the late 19^th century. SVM leaders appeared to be self-confident, singleminded, and triumphant. With great enthusiasm, they recruited and sent out thousands of missionaries throughout the world. This era of missionary activity peaked around the year 1900, when a huge missions conference was held in New York City with over two hundred thousand participants. Speakers at that conference included several Presidents of the United States. Church leaders spoke of mission in militaristic terms. They confidently predicted that within their lifetimes the forces of darkness would be vanquished and the whole world conquered with the gospel, paving the way for Jesus to return.

In the early decades of the 20^th century, however, SVM and other missionary agencies rapidly declined. A proper analysis of why this happened is beyond the scope of this article. To characterize SVM as a failure would be an overstatement. But the organization was not able to fulfill its ambitious goals, and clearly it was not for lack of effort. The heroism, vision and hard work of SVM and similar organizations masked a great deal of organizational weakness. Bosch wrote (p. 333):

People were challenged to go without any financial guarantees, simply trusting that the Lord of mission would provide… No time was left for timorous or carefully prepared advances into pagan territory, nor for the laborious building up of ‘autonomous’ churches on the ‘mission field.’ The gospel had to be proclaimed to all with the greatest speed, and for this there could never be enough missionaries. It also meant that there was neither time nor need for drawn-out preparation for missionary service. Many who went out had very little education or training…

The movement also suffered from theological deficiencies that were not recognized or corrected. Bosch continues:

The weaknesses of the faith mission movement are obvious: the romantic notion of the freedom of the individual to make his or her own choices. And almost convulsive preoccupation with saving people’s souls before Judgment Day, a limited knowledge of the cultures and religions of the people to whom the missionaries went, virtually no interest in the societal dimension of the Christian gospel, almost exclusive dependence on the charismatic personality of the founder, a very low view of the church, etc.

When mission is seen to flow from the personal choice of the missionary who, of his own volition and charitable nature, decides to carry the gospel to lost people, it places the missionary on a moral high ground relative to those he is trying to evangelize. Bosch concludes:

It spawned an enterprise in which the one party would do all the giving and the other all the receiving. This was so because one group was, in its own eyes, evidently privileged and the other, equally evidently, disadvantaged.

The biblical principle of election, however, declares that the one who carries the gospel is in no way superior to the one who receives it. Arrogance, hubris, overconfidence, and a sense of entitlement before God have no place in mission because they are incompatible with the gospel of grace.

In a voluntaristic missionary movement, participation in the mission is regarded as obedience. Of course, the Great Commission was given to the apostles in Matthew 28:18-20 in the form of a command. Shouldn’t we be obeying that command? This reasoning of obedience to Matthew 28:18-20 was applied by William Carey in his famous 1792 tract An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen. Since that time, Matthew 28:18-20 has maintained a prominent place in the Protestant missionary thinking. It is difficult to argue with this kind of logic. Jesus bids us, “Go,” therefore we must go! If we are not going as missionaries to make disciples of all nations, then aren’t we clearly disobeying Christ?

Bosch points out, however, that the command “go and make disciples” can be properly understood only within the greater context of Matthew’s gospel (Chap. 2). The meaning and requirements of discipleship are laid out by Jesus throughout the book, beginning with the Sermon on the Mount, progressing through many parables about the kingdom of heaven, and so on. If the Great Commission is lifted out of this context and made the sole motivation for missions, the movement that ensues becomes a reduction and distortion of what Jesus intended. Indeed, until the early part of the 19^th century, Protestant missionary literature never relied on obedience to Matthew 28:18-20 as the sole motivator; it was always connected to other biblical motifs. But movements of the SVM era applied the Great Commission with greater frequency and vigor, and by the 20^th century it was often presented as sufficient justification for everything that the movements were doing. “It became a kind of last line of defense, as if the protagonists of mission were saying, ‘How can you oppose mission to the heathen if Christ himself has commanded it?'” (pp. 340-341)

In addition to removing these verses from their proper context, Bosch (p. 341) notes two other problems with the Great Commission as the primary motivator for Christian missions. First, it is almost always used as a polemic. Individuals and churches who do not vigorously proselytize are denounced as watered-down, compromised and disobedient. Second, it takes mission out of the realm of gospel and places it in the realm of law. The Great Commission becomes a rule that must be obeyed if one is to be considered a faithful Christian. But mission in the New Testament did not begin with the apostles sitting down together and discussing how to obey the world mission command. Evangelism began with the “explosion of joy” (Newbigin’s term) emanating from the empty tomb. The apostles’ mission was sealed by their encounters with the risen Christ and empowered by the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. Mission arrived as a gift, not a law. It came to the apostles by divine election through the grace of God alone.

I found that statement pretty interesting, and I have been personally wrestling with this issue for some time. Although many things have already been said in articles and comments on this website, I decide to write a piece about the relationship between mission and sanctification, in order to clarify these things in my own mind.

Mission has been our context for understanding the will of God in the world around us, especially with regard to preaching the gospel, raising disciples and planting new churches. Our understanding of mission is expressed fairly well in how we select passage for our conferences. First we call sinners to repentance through passages about the Samaritan woman, the paralyzed man, and the tax collectors Levi and Zacchaeus. Then we preach on the crucifixion of Jesus and sometimes the resurrection of Jesus. Then we inevitably turn to the Great Commission and passages that speak about our mission as we understand it. But we don’t say much about growing in holiness or walking in Spirit. Thus it is understood that the mission of preaching the gospel and raising disciples becomes the basic purpose and responsibility of our lives.

The mission, understood as I described it above, is truly a great purpose. It is almost a comprehensive motivator for the Christian life. The goal is preaching the gospel around the world and the subjugation of all peoples to faith. There are always people to whom the Gospel has not preached, someone who has not yet received an invitation to discipleship. This desire to reach new people and raise new disciple does provide us with a dynamic life.

The person who truly accepts this sequence — repentance, gospel faith and mission — can no longer see his life apart from this mission. The mission defines his ministry and determines how he treats the people around him, especially if he becomes a leader at any level. With this orientation, life outside of this mission seems pointless and flawed. If we consistently follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, then every part of life which is not dedicated to advancing this mission appears to be waste of time, and all aspects of life should be fully devoted to this mission. For example, the family becomes a house church for the raising disciples. Work becomes a means of self-support for the purpose of raising disciples.

Although we rarely talk about sanctification, we do have a similar notion as we promote continual repentance and spiritual growth. We do struggle against sins of lust, materialism, selfishness, and other things. But this repentance is usually aimed at leaving something that keeps us from carrying out our mission. To repent of selfishness and laziness means to preach more diligently and make more disciples. This kind of spiritual growth leads to greater degree of preparedness and dedication for of the mission (e.g., becoming a better Bible teacher). Our repentance and spiritual growth are designed to serve the mission and thus are secondary to the mission.

Sometimes we do reveal a deeper understanding of spiritual growth. We do want to know God and be more like Him. However, we rarely consider or discuss these apart from the mission. Mission, it is said, is the context in which we come to know God personally and grow in the image of Christ. And participating in the mission is seen as the outward evidence and fruit of knowing. Therefore, our spiritual practices such as prayer, Bible study and church activities are concentrated around the mission and not much else.

Now let’s think about sanctification. What is sanctification’s biblical meaning and value? Perhaps there is a more precise definition, but here I will define sanctification as an increase in holiness. It is to experience gradual emancipation from the domination of the sinful nature remaining in the Christian life, and to progress in accordance with the spiritual nature acquired by new birth.

In Reformed theology, the process of sanctification occupies the entire period between justification (new birth) and glorification of the saint (physical death and resurrection). Sanctification continues throughout the earthly Christian life, and it is easy to understand why this is so. The commandment that we have been given is no less than “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The depravity of the human being is deep and thorough, whereas the holiness of God’s is infinitely high and wide. The goal of being released from sin and bringing your life into conformity with the holiness of God is so voluminous and ambitious that even if we were to live a thousand years, that would not be enough time to complete it, even though it would move us closer to the goal.

Who can say, “I’m holy enough?” Who can say, “I know God quite well and now am close to Him?” Who among the saints has no craving and necessity to be sanctified more? The Apostle Peter wrote, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do” (1Pe 1:15, NIV). Sanctification is a process that touches every single aspect of human life. If we are in Christ, then sanctification should be happening through and through. We are being sanctified in our thoughts. We are being sanctified in all our dealings with all people near and far, with believers and nonbelievers. We are being sanctified in the workplace, at home, in the church, and everywhere in between. We are being sanctified when we eat and drink, sanctified when we read books, sanctified when we are using the internet.

The process of sanctification requires constant spiritual warfare. If we are serious about our sanctification, then we find a considerable need for prayer, studying God’s word, learning from the Christian experience, communication with other believers, consultation with elders, reading books, and so on.

Sanctification is warfare, but it is also a sweet process of knowing God, being transformed into his image and displaying his glory to world. It is the process that the Holy Spirit is continually doing in us. The process is monumental. It fills the whole duration of life and gives meaning and beauty to all its spheres. Sanctification is sufficient to guide us and provide dynamic development for the individual, the church and society.

Can sanctification be regarded as secondary or subordinate to mission? In my opinion, the answer is no. Sanctification is the direct will of God. It has intrinsic value in itself. God called Israel to be a holy people in the land to which he was leading them. He gave him the law as a standard of holiness. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which is often called “the constitution of the kingdom of heaven,” is all about holiness. In 1 Peter 2:9, the apostle called all Christians to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, to proclaim God’s perfection through their words and their lives. And then, in the remainder of 1 Peter, he shows us what that entails: to be holy in every respect, to follow the nature of Christ, to learn to live a holy lives in society, the workplace, family and church. Sanctification is found in so many places throughout the Bible.

No, I do not think that sanctification may be subordinated to mission. But the two are related. Sanctification contributes to the execution of the mission, and it is also produced through participation in the mission. It seems to me that mission must be subject to sanctification. As I mentioned above, Peter wanted the recipients of his letter to be holy in all respects – not to simply avoid sin, but to actively grow in holiness. And Peter is the first one to whom Jesus entrusted his mission. He is the one to whom Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.” When Jesus gave Peter and the other apostles the Great Commission, he said, “…and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Mt 28:20). The Apostle Paul described his mission thusly: “We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ” (Col 1:28). The sanctification of all people is an integral purpose of the mission.

Mission and sanctification are closely related, but they are not interchangeable. To make sanctification subordinate to mission will inevitably distort both of them.

According to the Great Commission, the mission of the apostles was to preach the gospel and raise disciples. If we understand the task purely in terms of replication – making disciples just for the sake of getting them to preach the gospel and make more disciples, who will then continue to preach and make disciples and so on, until the coming of Christ – then what has become of Christianity? Everything gets reduced to having a saving faith in Christ and living a lifestyle most conducive to continuing this cycle.

Can all of Christianity be reduced to these two steps of having saving faith in Christ and then adopting a mission-centered lifestyle? Or is there something more fundamental that God wants to accomplish in us? Preaching the gospel and making disciples is an outward manifestation of our faith. But these are not effective or pleasing to God apart from the inner reality of holiness. It is the inner fruit that prepares, enables and equips us for the mission.

To clarify what I am trying to say, consider these two alternatives. Do I grow spiritually in order to make disciples? Or do I make disciples in order to grow spiritually? To ask these questions reveals a misunderstanding. Being a disciple or growing as a disciple is no different from spiritual growth. Whether we say, “Grow as disciple to make disciples” or “Make disciples to grow as disciple,” in the end it’s the same thing. Whether we say, “Be a Christian to make Christians” or “Make Christians in order to grow as a Christian,” this definition of the Christian life becomes empty. It becomes a vicious cycle, devoid of content. All that remains is wandering in the darkness and lead others into the same darkness.

It is only when we restore sanctification to its proper place that everything begins to make sense. After justification, we must follow Christ and learn to live a Christian life. Christian character and values have their own intrinsic worth apart from mission. God conforms us to these values through the process of sanctification and then we pass these values on to others. Jesus’ words “Go and make disciples” should not be construed as “Making others capable of performing the same mission.” Rather, it is as Jesus said,” Teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” to restore them to completeness.

If we fail to give due attention to sanctification, then our faith becomes shallow and insipid. Moreover, the mission that we are trying to carry out loses its fundamental meaning and purpose. Focusing too heavily on the mission eventually begins to harm the mission. Evangelism and discipleship become less meaningful and reminiscent of network marketing.

I will conclude with a personal testimony to explain how these reflections grew out of my experience. For several years I was a fellowship leader, serving a student mission on campus. We regularly visited the campus, prayed, shouted slogans, sang songs, went into the dorms, preached the gospel and invited students. We were very active. This life was interesting, dynamic and sensational. There was always room to go out and preach more. There were long lists of potential sheep for whom we should pray. There were those who came and we prayed for them to change and grow. We were always inviting someone, somewhere. Overall it was a fun time, and I thank God for it.

Later, however, I became the leader of a ministry in a village where our church was located, and I served there until it left one year ago to pioneer in another place. Many interesting things happened, but I will make just one observation. In the village, a lot of people came to us. They were not like university students. They were men and women with various problems, dependencies and sinful habits. We proclaimed to them salvation in Jesus, but it was obvious that we could not make them conform to our mission plan. We couldn’t just tell them to write a testimony, repent and go out to preach and make disciples. Although it was clearly impossible to do that, I struggled to come up with a plan that was different and more suitable to them. I did not know how to organize a living and dynamic ministry that was not based on an ethic of constant missionary expansion. I even began to think that without a strong focus on evangelism and sending of missionaries, we could not be a church or educate anyone or help anyone. The problem was my poor understanding of Christianity. I did not know how to show people that, when we surrender to Christ, the conversion works in all spheres of our present lives. I did not realize the importance of sanctification in my own life or its relationship to mission, and I could not teach it in to the people who came to us. They needed to be instructed in sanctification, and mission could not fill that role.

God cares about relationships. When Jesus ascended to heaven, he didn’t leave behind a book of writings. He left behind a community of witnesses who were filled with the Holy Spirit and entrusted the preaching of the gospel to them (Acts 1:8). As members of this community proclaim the gospel, they invite others to become part of God’s family where their true personhood will be realized. That family is not equivalent to a church organization. It is the body of all people who belong to Christ, the “communion of saints” that is mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed. Evangelism that fails to call people to join this body is alien to the New Testament. Jesus never intended his disciples to be lone wolves. Nor did he intend them to live in small, isolated, parochial clans whose members remain suspicious of everyone on the outside (Mk 9:38-40). He prayed for all his followers to be one, to experience among themselves the loving oneness that has with his own Father in a highly visible way, so that the whole world would see that the gospel is true (John 17:20-23).

So the preaching of the gospel is not just passing a set of teachings from one person to another; it is knitting persons together in grace to heal them, their families, their communities, and the world of the relational brokenness caused by sin. The healing that we experience now through the work of the Holy Spirit is the downpayment, the foretaste, of the full restoration that will be enacted when Jesus returns in power and glory. The present signs of the kingdom, our miraculously restored relationships with God and with one another, are the evidence and the engine of true evangelism.

If God’s plan to restore relationships requires that the gospel be spread from one person to another, one community to another, and one nation to another, then someone has to begin that process. Certain persons, communities and nations must be chosen to receive the gospel and bear it to others. That is the key idea of election as described by Paul in Romans 9-11.

Election wasn’t invented by Paul. It is the storyline of the Old Testament. Out of all nations, God called one nation, the Israelites, for his special purpose. He shaped their history through divine intervention and revelation, preparing them to be the first ones to welcome the Messiah.

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin starts his discussion of election by reminding us of how offensive it sounds to nonbelievers, especially today. The idea that certain individuals and cultures have received special, unique knowledge from the Creator — the one who is Maker of all, whose image is borne by every human being – seems ludicrous. It is especially hard to believe, given that the people who were chosen were not outstanding among the great civilizations of the world; they hardly distinguished themselves by their achievements, scholarship, or virtuous lives. If God cares for all, as we believers claim, then why would he heap special treatment on some, on a small minority of people who do not appear to deserve it?

Election is patently offensive to every generation and culture. If a stranger arrives from a foreign land claiming to have special knowledge of universal truth, that claim is enough to make natives cry, “Missionary, go home!” How do we handle with this thorny problem? First, we should openly acknowledge that it is a problem. Second, we must understand that God’s election was never intended to set one person above another, one group above another, one culture above another. Election does not confer any moral privilege or special standing before God. In fact, the manner in which election unfolds throughout history makes it absolutely clear that salvation comes by grace alone, not through the intrinsic goodness or special qualities of any person or group. Never at any point in God’s history do his elect have any claim to special treatment by him because of their obedience, effort or virtue. The blessings received by the elect never come to them because of their wonderful goodness, but only despite their horrible badness.

When God called Abraham, he said: “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Gen 12:1-2). It is tempting to read this statement as conditional: “If you leave and go, then I will bless you. If you don’t, I will not bless you.” But the blessing is not conditioned on Abraham’s response. God simply announces that he will be blessed, and God invites him to go and see the evidence of that blessing. Abraham does not earn the promise; his obedience is the way that he receives the promise.

The author of Genesis makes it clear that Abraham had no intrinsic virtues that set him above other people. When he went down to Egypt, he acted dishonestly. He appears less honorable than Pharaoh, and yet God rescued and blessed him (Gen 12:10-20). Again, in chapter 20, Abraham is less righteous than Abimelech, but God chose to bless him anyway. This favoritism toward Abraham has a universal purpose: God intends to bless all nations on earth through him (Gen 12:3).

About 430 years later, God made a special agreement with the Israelites at Mount Sinai. This covenant is described in Exodus 19:5-6: “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Unlike the covenant of promise that God made to Abraham, this covenant of law is very conditional. If the Israelites obeyed God fully, then they would receive his special blessings. This covenant of law did not amend, change or supersede the covenant of promise that God gave earlier (Gal 3:17). God’s declarations to Abraham stood regardless of what the Israelites chose to do.

In an article posted last month, David L. correctly noted that Exodus 19:5-6 is a promise made to Israel, not to the Church. Christians who apply these verses to themselves are taking the passage out of context. The covenant described in Exodus 19:5-6 is a failed covenant and was doomed to fail from the start. Even before Moses came down from the mountain, the Israelites had already broken the agreement by worshipping the golden calf (Ex 32). A literal application of Exodus 19:5-6 to ourselves would lead us to believe that if we obey God’s commands, then God will bless us and our nation. If so, then we must not ignore the word fully. The obedience required by this covenant is complete obedience to the law of Moses, all 600 commands, because anyone who places himself under the law is obligated to obey it in its entirety (Gal 5:3).

The covenant of law failed because the Israelites willfully disobeyed. But God, in his sovereign purpose, used their disobedience to demonstrate that, though they were the chosen people, they were no better than anyone else. The division of their kingdom, the destruction of their temple, and their captivity in Babylon should have produced in them a deep humiliation that paved the way for the message of salvation by grace alone. This humiliation of failure, combined with the knowledge of God’s saving grace through Jesus, should have given them an openminded and generous spirit required of missionaries. God was preparing them to go to other nations and say, “We are no better than you. We are not coming with superior strength, wisdom, or moral standards. We were and still are deeply sinful and broken, and in many ways you are better than us. But God, for reasons that we do not understand, walked among our people and revealed to us something about his great salvation plan. We witnessed God’s redemption firsthand through the death and resurrection of his Son. Now we are experiencing his work of restoration. God wants to repair our relationship with you. We are your brothers and sisters, not your elders. We are not attempting to rule over you or change you into Jews like us. We will respect you, accept you and love you as you are, because that is what God has done for us; that is the essence of the gospel. We believe that the Holy Spirit is already hovering over you, working in mysterious ways that we cannot yet understand, and we hope to learn from you what God has been doing among you. We encourage you to respond to the Spirit’s invitation and become equal partners with us in this glorious work of restoration.”

That is the character that God wanted to instill in his chosen people. And, to an extent, that is what happened in the generations leading up to Christ, especially among the Hellenistic Jews scattered across the Empire. While they kept their laws and traditions, they also spoke Greek, and they began to mingle and develop meaningful relationships with the Gentiles around them. Their synagogues began to attract God-fearing Greeks who, for good reason, did not submit to circumcision but nevertheless loved the Lord. Many Hellenistic Jews developed an open and tolerant spirit as exemplified by Stephen and Philip in Acts chapters 6-8.

But in and around Jerusalem, the opposite was happening. In the years leading up to Christ, the rabbinical schools heightened the distinctions between clean and unclean, narrowing the popular conceptions of who was going to be saved. God’s salvation was no longer for all Israel; those were seen as worldly and compromised, such as the tax collectors and public sinners, were excluded. As Pharisees trended toward rigid interpretations and practices of the law, those considered to be elect became fewer and more distant from the rest. And the Essenes, who became so strict in their practices that they considered the Pharisees to be impure, formed monastic communities and withdrew to the caves at Qumran. They labeled everyone outside of their community as “Breakers of the Covenant.”

As these groups increasingly staked their identity and self-worth on the keeping of their traditions and laws, their expectations for the coming Messiah turned toward validation and reward for the elect, combined with punishment for anyone who oppressed or opposed them in any way. The enemies of the Jews were seen as the enemies of God, destined for enslavement or destruction. The late missiologist David J. Bosch (Transforming Mission, p. 19-20) explained:

As the political and social conditions of the people of the old covenant deteriorate, there increasingly develops the expectation that, one day, the Messiah will come to conquer the Gentile nations and restore Israel. This expectation is usually linked with fantastic ideas of world domination by Israel, to whom all the nations will be subject. It reaches its peak in the apocalyptic beliefs and attitudes of the Essene communities along the shores of the Dead Sea. The horizons of apocalyptic belief are cosmic: God will destroy the entire present world and usher in a new world according to a detailed and predetermined plan The present world, with all its inhabitants, is radically evil. The faithful have to separate themselves from it, keep themselves pure as the holy remnant, and wait for God’s intervention. In such a climate even the idea of a missionary attitude toward the Gentile world would be preposterous… At best God would, without any involvement on the part of Israel, by means of a divine act, save those Gentiles he had elected in advance.

Ironically, the religion of the Jews hardened into keeping of laws and traditions which, although apparently based on the Old Testament, ignored the actual flow of OT history. Their faith became increasingly focused on right principles and practices rather than on right relationships with God and other people. Bosch continues (p. 20):

To a large extent Jewish apocalyptic spells the end of the earlier dynamic understanding of history. Past salvific events are no longer celebrated as guarantees and anticipations of God’s future involvement with his people; they have become sacred traditions which have to be preserved unchanged. The Law becomes an absolute entity which Israel has to serve and obey. Greek metaphysical categories gradually begin to replace historical thinking. Faith becomes a matter of timeless metahistorical and carefully systematized teaching.

When Jesus arrived on the scene around 27 A.D., he overturned the popular understanding of election by declaring God’s unconditional saving grace to all Israel, especially those who were marginalized and considered impure. He elected the Twelve to represent pillars of a new chosen people who would embody the gospel and convey it to the nations. But just as the rest of Israel had difficulty embracing the Gentiles, so did the apostles and the early Church. As much as Peter and his fellow church members had to evangelize the nations, they themselves had to be re-evangelized by the nations, by seeing and fully accepting the work of Christ in Gentile believers who were different from them. God’s election does not give anyone a superior status. His election is designed to show the world that, from first to last, salvation comes to all by grace alone.

Here I want to focus on some aspects of election found in Romans chapters 9-11. Paul didn’t write those chapters to settle modern theological debates. He was expounding on the relationship between the Gentiles and Jews. He was trying to explain why the nation of Israel, which had been created and chosen by God to receive the gospel and carry it to the world, rejected Christ and failed to carry out its mission. And he was relating that explanation to his teaching that righteousness must always come by faith alone, not by observing the law. I imagine that if we could ask the Apostle Paul about the merits of Calvinism versus Arminianism, he would respond with a very puzzled look, not because he never heard of Calvin or Arminius, but because to him this debate would sound very odd.

As modern evangelicals, we tend to think of salvation in terms of the rescue of individuals. We imagine humanity as an endless parade of souls marching along on a highway to hell, and our mission is to pluck as many souls as we can off that road and set them on the path to heaven. If we follow this thinking to its logical conclusion, the most faithful Christian is the one who asks everyone he meets, “If you were to die this afternoon, do you think you would go to heaven?” The most effective missionary is the one with the highest number of converts. And the overarching goal of discipleship is to change each person into a lean, mean, soul-saving machine. Other aspects of gospel work — feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting the lonely, and so on — are just for the sake of good public relations, to open people’s hearts and prepare them for the “real” purpose of evangelism, which is to close the deal and get everyone converted and baptized before they die.

I am not saying that this individual-rescue idea of salvation is entirely wrong. I do believe that there is a great deal of truth in it. But this is not the way that the gospel is presented in the New Testament. It is the mindset of a 19^th-century tent revivalist, not the language of Jesus, Peter or Paul. One reason why the New Testament doesn’t present the gospel in those terms is that Hebrew people had radically different notions of what it means to be a person.

In our understanding, a person is an autonomous being, one who exercises independence in thought, decision and action. In debates about abortion, for example, one of the key questions is, “When should a fetus be considered a person?” Many have argued that a fetus should be considered a person when it becomes viable and has a reasonable chance of surviving outside the mother’s womb. This modernist notion of persons shows up in that famous statement by Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” His existence as a person is validated when he exercises his own rational thought.

But the Hebrews who wrote the Bible had different ideas about personhood. To the Jewish mind, a person was someone who was had significant relationships with others. At the beginning of Romans 9, Paul wishes that he could be cut off from Christ if only his fellow Israelites would be saved. To us, that desire seems very strange. Who among us would be willing to be condemned for all eternity to save other people, many of whom we have never met? But to Paul it made sense, because he never regarded himself as a lone wolf. He was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee among Pharisees (Acts 23:6, Php 3:5). His personal identity was so closely bound to his people that he couldn’t imagine himself being separated from them. If being with Christ was going to cut him off from his community, he almost didn’t want to be with Christ.

The other apostles had similar feelings. Before Jesus ascended to heaven, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) When we read this, we tend to scoff at the disciples: “How could they possibly think that way? Didn’t they realize that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom, not a political one?” But their question was perfectly legitimate. They couldn’t imagine a gospel message that would personally save them without also restoring their nation. Given all the promises God made to Israel in the Old Testament, and given what Paul says in Romans 9-11, their question is defensible and biblically sound. The Hebrew God cares about individuals, but he also cares about the nations and especially about his chosen people. How often do the Old Testament prophets speak God’s word not to individuals but to the nations and to Israel?

In chapter 7 of The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin argues that the idea of persons as relational beings is consistent with Scripture and with orthodox Christian belief. It is rooted in the understanding of God as Father, Son and Spirit – three persons in one God. Human beings created in his image share in his relational nature. The first mention of human beings appears in Genesis 1:26-27:

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

The Trinitarian God spoke and created people as males and females, designed for relationships with one another. This longing for interpersonal relationship is expressed in sexuality. Sexual attraction, which is hardwired by God into our bodies, minds, emotions and personalities, is the magnetism and glue that creates families. The families produce children and become the building blocks of societies. In addition to these relationships with one another, we were also made to be in relationship with the rest of the created world. Our role in that relationship is to rule over the earth, serving as its stewards and managers (Gen 1:28).

When sin enters the world in Genesis chapter 3, it mars all the relationships that define us as persons. Man’s relationship with himself is broken and he experiences shame. He runs and hides, a sign of his broken relationship with God. Marital intimacy is cracked as the man blames his wife, and they cover themselves with fig leaves. Their relationship with the world is broken when the ground is cursed and rebels against them, producing thorns and thistles instead of food. When the destruction spreads through Adam’s family to his descendants and to all of society (chapters 4-6), God decides to scrub the world by a devastating flood. But the flood doesn’t solve the problem, because human beings remain evil from childhood (Gen 8:21). Human efforts to fix up the world are doomed to fail, as evidenced by the Tower of Babel, and the disunity, conflict and chaos continue (Gen 11:1-9).

If sin destroyed the relationships that make the world run as it should, then shouldn’t the gospel be about repairing relationships and restoring the world? Yes; that is how the Bible is structured. World history is a story with four great acts. Act 1 is creation: God made the world and everything in it; then he created people to love him, to love one another, and to take care of the earth. Act 2 is the Fall: sin entered the world and destroyed our relationships with God, with one another, and with the created world. Act 3 is redemption, which began with Abraham and ended at the cross. God paid the price for sin through the death of his son. Act 4 is restoration, when God remakes humanity and the earth. Restoration begins with the resurrection of Christ, his ascension to heaven, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this post-Pentecostal era, the Holy Spirit is working to restore our relationships with God, with one another and with the world. Act 4 will continue until Jesus returns to completely destroy sin and death, to raise our bodies and establish the new heaven and the new earth.

If we see God’s purpose as holistic restoration of mankind and the world, then our understanding of our mission must be broader than saving individual souls so they can go to heaven. The Church must be involved in the healing of relationships at all levels: our relationship with God (evangelism and worship), our relationships to ourselves (physical and psychological healing), our relationships with our spouses and children (healing of families), our relationships with our neighbors and with all society (healing of communities and nations), and even our relationships to the created world (environmental stewardship). No single individual can do all these things effectively, but the Church as a whole can do them by allowing different parts of the Body of Christ to perform their specialized functions. These activities of the Church will not transform the whole earth and usher in the kingdom of God; that will happen when Jesus returns. But the working of the Holy Spirit through the Church serves as a witness, a sign, and a foretaste of the kingdom that is already breaking into the world.

So what does all this have to do with election? That’s a good question…

Sending missionaries is a laudable goal. But a church cannot measure its success, or its degree of obedience to God, solely by the number of missionaries it sends. If we say, “Our mission is to send missionaries,” then we are merely running in circles. We need to clarify what the missionaries are supposed to do. If we say that the missionaries are supposed to make disciples, and those disciples are supposed to make more disciples, then we are again running in circles. The church cannot exist only to replicate itself.

Jesus Christ says to us, “Behold, I make all things new!” (Rev 21:5) The church, through its missionary outreach, should be bringing new believers into the fold. And the fresh working of the Spirit in those new believers, especially those from new generations and cultures, should be breathing vitality and renewal into the church. That is part of God’s grand design. A concept of mission is incomplete if it does not include the church being re-evangelized by its converts. Unfortunately, the way that churches have conceived and carried out foreign missions over the years has often prevented this backflow from happening. Consider the well known missionary hymn We’ve a Story to Tell to the Nations by H. Ernest Nichol (1862-1928). The verses of this hymn begin as follows:

1. We’ve a story to tell to the nations…
2. We’ve a song to be sung to the nations…
3. We’ve a message to give to the nations…
4. We’ve a Savior to show to the nations…

The pattern here is unmistakable. From this perspective, mission is about exporting a message but never about importing. It’s giving but not receiving, serving but not being served. In The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin explains how this type of missionary activity, although well intentioned, ultimately quenches the Spirit’s fire (p. 139):

In this case the sending church is insulated from the correction it needs to receive from the new converts. Mission, as I have insisted, is not just church extension. It is an action in which the Holy Spirit does new things, brings into being new obedience. But the new gifts are for the whole body and not just for the new members. Mission involves learning as well as teaching, receiving as well as giving.

During the 20^th century, the flow of evangelizing missionaries from mainline churches, particularly those in western Europe, slowed down or stopped entirely. This coincided with the decline of church attendance and overall secularization of European society. Clearly these two trends are linked. A church that is shrinking and fighting for its survival can hardly be expected to send large numbers of missionaries overseas. Over the years, however, I have heard Christians claim that those churches shrank because they neglected foreign missions: “European churches didn’t keep their mission; they stopped sending missionaries, and that’s the reason why they declined.” If I had a penny for every time someone told me that, I would have many pennies. Is that a sensible or reasonable analysis?

Here is a common metaphor: “Water flows into the Dead Sea, but not out; that’s why the Dead Sea is lifeless.” By implication, a person or church that lives selfishly, continually receiving but never giving, cannot survive for long. Perhaps that is so. But what happens to a body of water that has streams flowing out but none flowing in? Sooner or later, that lake will run dry.

The gospel was never intended to flow just from proselytizer to proselyte, from evangelist to evangelee. (Is that a word? It ought to be.) If we think that it does, we miss one of the huge themes of the New Testament, a theme that addresses some of the deepest mysteries of the Bible:

• Why God chose Israel and covenanted her to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:5-6)
• Why Israel failed to keep this covenant and, in a sense, was destined to do so
• Why the Jewish nation as a whole rejected Christ and, in a sense, was destined to do so
• Why Jesus had to ascend to heaven and entrust the preaching of the gospel to his young disciples
• Why Jesus appeared to the most outrageously legalistic Jew and appointed him to carry the gospel to the Gentiles
• Why in the fullness of time the gospel will ultimately flow from Gentiles back to Jews

That theme is the doctrine of election. Stay tuned; there’s more to come.

Here I am using the terms “evangelized” and “conversion” in a broad sense. Peter was not receiving the gospel for the first time. He already was a genuine Christian in a personal relationship with Christ. But through his encounter with Cornelius, his character and faith were transformed again as he came to a new and deeper awareness of the gospel.

Before then, Peter had always assumed that belief in Christ should be accompanied by visible changes in lifestyle, changes that would turn people into devout, observant Jews like him. He had assumed that God’s mission was the same as bringing lost sheep into the church that he knew and loved, the merry band of Jewish disciples founded a decade earlier by Jesus himself. What Peter did not realize was that, as God was bringing sheep into the fold, he was also working powerfully to recreate the church. Peter’s previous knowledge of the gospel wasn’t wrong, but it was woefully incomplete.

In The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin writes about the meeting between Peter and Cornelius (pp. 59-60):

It is not as though the church opened its gates to admit a new person into its company, and then closed them again, remaining unchanged except for the addition of a name to its roll of members. Mission is not just church extension. It is something more costly and more revolutionary. It is the action of the Holy Spirit, who in his sovereign freedom both convicts the world (John 16:8-11) and leads the church toward the fullness of the truth that it has not yet grasped (John 16:12-15). Mission is not essentially an action by which the church puts forth its own power and wisdom to conquer the world around it; it is, rather, an action of God, putting forth the power of his Spirit to bring the universal work of Christ for the salvation of the world nearer to its completion. At the end of the story, which runs from Acts 10:1 to 11:18, the church itself became a kind of society different from what it was before Peter and Cornelius met. It had been a society enclosed within the cultural world of Israel; it became something radically different, a society that spanned the enormous gulf between Jew and pagan and was open to embrace all the nations that had been outside the covenant by which Israel lived.

This distinction between God’s mission and church extension is not a small matter. It has enormous implications for how we see and talk about ourselves and how we act toward others in a pluralistic and multicultural world. Before talking about that, however, we ought to first ask whether this view of mission is biblically supported. Do missionaries and converts truly evangelize one another? Or does the gospel flow in one direction as believers go out and make disciples, then those disciples go out and make more disciples, and the process continues ad infinitum until every nation has been reached and Jesus returns in power and glory?

In Acts 1:8, Jesus says to his apostles: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” This verse is a mini-outline of the whole book of Acts. The apostolic witness began in Jerusalem (chapter 2), then it spread to Judea and Samaria (chapter 8), and eventually it went out to other nations (chapter 13). We see a linear progression as Jesus’ disciples made more disciples. But if we don’t pay close attention to how it actually happened, we will miss a key point that Luke is making throughout the book.

Many evangelicals think of Acts 1:8 as “the world mission command.” Indeed, in Matthew 28:18-20 and Mark 16:15, the Great Commission is given as a command. But Acts 1:8 presents it as a promise. Jesus states as a fact that it is going to happen, not by the volition of the apostles, but by the sovereign will and power of the Holy Spirit. And as we read through the book, that’s exactly how it happens. The apostles do not adopt Acts 1:8 as their mission statement and then formulate a strategy to carry the gospel to the nations. Rather, the entire movement is orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost, it is the rushing wind-song of the Spirit that causes a great crowd to gather and makes them ask, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12) The spread of the gospel to Judea and Samaria is precipitated not by an intentional decision by the apostles, but by persecution that broke out after the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1). And the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries was a direct response to the command of the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2).

The church portrayed in the book of Acts is not an army of well trained soldiers executing a military-style campaign to conquer unbelieving nations with the gospel. Nor is it a board of corporate executives launching an advertising blitz to market the gospel to consumers. The church in Acts never fully takes hold of the mission, nor does it ever really grasp the mission, because the mission is not theirs. Moment by moment, the apostles respond in obedience as the Holy Spirit leads. But they are never qualified to direct the mission because they do not understand everything it entails. What they fail to realize that the mission is not just about discipling the nations; it is also about transforming them. As the Spirit is bringing new sheep into the fold, he is also prying open the minds and hearts of church leaders and members to welcome newcomers unconditionally as Jesus welcomed them. This process of assimilation is painful and awkward. It tests the limits of their faith and dependence on God. But through these birthpains, the Spirit brings forth an amazing new community the likes of which the world had never before seen. It is a community of genuine unity-in-diversity. A place where Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free, truly connect with one another and become one in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:28). A place of genuine, radical freedom, where ethical standards, laws and commands are replaced by love (Gal 5:14).

The mission is never the property of the church; it is always missio Dei, God’s mission. Newbigin writes (p. 61):

At this point the church has to keep silence. It is not in control of the mission. Another is in control, and his fresh works will repeatedly surprise the church, compelling it to stop talking and to listen. Because the Spirit himself is sovereign over the mission, the church can only be the attentive servant. In sober truth the Spirit is himself the witness who goes before the church in its missionary journey. The church’s witness is secondary and derivative. The church is witness insofar as it follows obediently where the Spirit leads.

That is exactly what happens in Acts chapter 10. Peter didn’t approach the home of Cornelius with the intention of giving him the gospel. The Spirit carried a hesitant Peter there to show him what he had already been doing, something which Peter never imagined. Peter’s job was to obediently share what he knew, to observe what the Spirit did, and to welcome the new Gentile believers as they were.

The distinction between church expansion and God’s mission is not a small matter. It is fundamental to grasping the nature of the gospel. The distinction is especially important as we reach out to the next generation. Young people have been taught to frame history, politics and religion in terms of power struggles between groups. They believe that racism, bigotry, and war result whenever one group believes it is superior to other groups. So if you approach a young person and talk about your faith, she does not see you as an individual person talking to her. She sees you as a member of one group – say, a religious conservative Christian – trying to bring her into your group in order to expand your group’s membership rolls to increase its prestige and power. That is why so many have grown skeptical and weary of all evangelists and of all “organized religion.”

And who can blame them? Throughout the centuries, Christians of many stripes have tried to carry the gospel throughout the world. And so often, those efforts were confounded with military campaigns, colonialism, economic opportunism and cultural imperialism. They were tainted by the desire to build up one church, organization or denomination at the expense of other groups while violating the dignity of individual persons (e.g., through conversion and baptism by force). When today’s young people hear us equate God’s mission with the expansion of our own church, they react against it strongly and viscerally. When they hear us speak of God’s mission in paramilitary terms as conquering the nations and religions of the world (e.g., Muslims) they will have none of it. When they hear us speak of evangelism and discipleship in terms of saving those who are poor, ignorant, blind and disobedient by transforming them into Christians who so conveniently happen to resemble ourselves, they will have none of it. They instinctively feel that it is not the gospel. And they are correct; it is not the gospel.

The gospel does not elevate Jew over Gentile or Gentile over Jew. It does not elevate a denomination that is better, purer or more faithful over another denomination that is liberal, worldly or compromised. It does not elevate a Christian over a Muslim, Hindu or atheist. The gospel brings everyone to the foot of the cross where the ground is absolutely level, where salvation comes to all by the grace of God alone.

What today’s postmoderns instinctively know is something that the church has too often forgotten: that God’s mission is not equivalent to church expansion. Yes, the mission does involve welcoming new sheep into the fold. But it is also about continually reforming and recreating the church into something new and more beautiful, a preview of God’s rule and of the glorious world to come. None of us knows exactly how that ought to look. If we try to invent that new community by ourselves, we build something that too closely resembles us, the creatures that we are right now rather than the creatures that Christ wants us to be. That is why we can never fully set the course of our own mission. Yes, we must remember what God has done and faithfully build upon the foundations laid in the past. But we must also be willing to put aside our current ideas and follow the Spirit wherever he leads, because the mission always belongs to him.

Dear friends: Today a comment arrived from one of our readers. It was originally addressed to Joshua Yoon in response to this:

http://www.ubfriends.org/2011/02/questions-for-the-next-general-director/comment-page-1/#comment-2168

Because of its length and scope, we have decided to run it as an article. Take a look and see if you can offer him any advice. Thanks!

Hi Joshua!

Thank you for your comments. I was particularly interested in your question about keeping the name, “University Bible Fellowship.”

My comment is more personal in nature and not so much directed toward the ministry’s overall structure and leadership. If anything, I think it is a personal prayer request (with a bit of background) for us to seek the Lord’s guidance and direction for our new house-church ministry.

As you and several others know, our family moved from Canada to Japan in 2009 to serve as pioneers. We live on a southern island of Japan called Kyushu. Our city is called Oita. There is one other UBF chapter on the island in Nagasaki, which is located about 3-4 hours away by car. We meet sometimes for retreats which are very encouraging to us. I also get invited to a yearly director’s meeting in Tokyo to meet with other leaders. We exchange several e-mails throughout the year and pray for each other. I definitely feel that God is working on a national level through this loving and diverse community of believers (most directors have a Korean background, one is Japanese, and another is, well, Canadian).

With the exception of these meetings, on a day-to-day level, mostly we are on our own in our small house church. Because of language problems and lack of Christian resources in Japan, I’ve been turning to other ministries to help me with Bible studies, personal growth, and message preparation. Combined with a good foundation in UBF, God is really beginning to open my eyes to a rich and well-rounded personal relationship with God as my eternal Husband, Friend, Provider, Counsellor, Master, Redeemer, Creator, etc.

My wife, Tsukasa, is Japanese. Through God’s sovereign leading, she met Christ through UBF in Canada and she has been serving the ministry very faithfully and joyfully ever since. That said, she never attended University or College (she started working after high school). Although she expressed interest in attending some post-secondary program after our children start school, I guess she felt a little strange being in a campus-based ministry until now. At present, we are alone in a small city with no other campus ministries around. When we visit nearby campuses, there are signs everywhere saying we shouldn’t be there because a) we’re not officially affiliated with the University, and b) all faith-based activity is strictly prohibited on Japanese campuses.

So, my question is: should we keep the name “University Bible Fellowship”? Even more, should our family be limited to campus mission?

Recently, we started our study of the book of Acts and one thing I noticed was the lack of church organization. With the exception of using terms like the church in Jerusalem, the church in Antioch, etc. the early church didn’t really have a name. I guess the same was true of the Old Testament as well. Of course there was a temple, but essentially it was just a group of people called by God to be His treasured people and to participate in His eternal salvation purpose.

In Japan, Christianity is pretty foreign (less than 1% of the population is Christian) and one of the questions I’m often asked by native Japanese people is about the differences among the different denominations. If Jesus is one, why are there so many Christian groups? Why do they have different names? Which one is the *right* one? I think all these questions are good. But in the end, the different groups can create unnecessary confusion and stumbling blocks for very early seekers, especially in a culture which doesn’t have a strong Christian heritage.

I can imagine different pros and cons for maintaining a church structure, but sometimes I wonder if in a situation like ours we should just drop the church name all together yet still live like Christians in a very genuine way. Whoever God sends to us, whether University student or not, we should just embrace and try to give them an appropriate environment where they can feel comfortable and grow in the knowledge of Christ which their soul is so obviously longing for. Maybe as the church grows, we could think more about name or organization.

These are just some of the thoughts I’ve been having recently as I try to adjust to my new life serving Christ in a foreign country and culture, and Joshua’s post inspired me to write about them. In reading some of the posts on this site, I realized that some of them are written from a North American perspective (and they should be!). In some ways, I’ve come to understand myself and the UBF ministry much better now that I am living in an Asian environment, a little similar to Korea. Turning to the Bible, when the Samaritan woman met Jesus, at first she didn’t see the Son of God; she saw a Jewish man. In other words, Jesus became a man of the time and culture so he could connect very naturally with the people. Surely if he came now, he would do things a little differently and the parables would probably be about things like smart phones and cars, instead of vineyards and mustard seeds. Either way, the never changing message about God’s passionate love to be with us — his bride — for eternity would be the same!

Anyway, my hope in this post is to let our prayer requests be known. I also welcome any comments or feedback.

McGavran noticed that some agencies were successful at making converts, but others were stagnant and barely growing. He set out to discover why. After careful observation, he found that the stagnant agencies exhibited some common features. He called their strategy a “mission station” approach. A mission station resembled a North American or European church. Western values and customs were on display, giving the church a decidedly non-Indian look and feel. Converts of these missionaries had powerful conversion experiences, but the converts were few and far between. In The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, missiologist Lesslie Newbigin explains why (p. 122):

In the “mission station” approach, as McGavran sees it, converts are detached from the natural communities to which they belong, attached to the foreign missions and institutions, and required to conform to ethical and cultural standards that belong to the Christianity of the foreign missionary. The effect of this policy is twofold. On the one hand the convert, having been transplanted into an alien culture, is no longer in a position to influence non-Christian relatives and neighbors; on the other hand, the energies of the mission are exhausted in the effort to bring the converts, or more often their children, into conformity with the standards supposed by the missionaries to be required by the gospel. Both factors have the effect of stopping the growth of the church.

I’ll bet that the leaders of the “mission station” agencies didn’t like McGavran’s analysis. I can almost hear them saying, “We focus on quality rather than quantity.” They may have justified their approach by noting that their converts, though few, looked like outstanding examples of Christian discipleship because they had been so thoroughly transformed. Indeed, in the way that they spoke, dressed, and acted, they resembled miniature versions of the missionaries themselves! I suppose that these missionaries had the best of intentions. They were sincere, sacrificial, loving and devout, never imagining that they were imposing western cultural values. From their perspective, their standards were matters of biblical principle, right versus wrong. They imagined they were reading the Bible straight, interpreting Scripture just as it is. Whatever they taught the converts to do was just what they had done when they were converted and discipled.

McGavran concluded that the “mission station” approach was based on a faulty reading of the Great Commission. In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus said, “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.” Based on those verses, McGavran said that the mission of the church has three aspects: discipling, baptizing, and perfecting. (Note that McGavran’s use of the term “discipling” is quite different from the way we use it in UBF. To us, “discipling” suggests discipleship training, helping converts to obey the teachings of the Bible. In McGavran’s terminology, that kind of training is called “perfecting”, and “discipling” means to help them make the initial commitment to identify themselves as followers of Christ.) McGavran believed that the order of the three activities in Matthew 28:19-20 is very significant, reflecting an order in time and priority. He thought that the missionary should focus on discipling and baptizing, and leave the task of perfecting to leaders of the indigenized church. The “mission station” agencies lose their effectiveness when they spend their time, resources and energy on perfecting rather than discipling and baptizing.

Personally, I disagree with some of McGavran’s conclusions. I am not convinced that Matthew 28:19-20 implies an order of priority, and the distinction between discipling and perfecting seems artificial. But McGavran’s basic observations are compelling. Lesslie Newbigin, who was also a missionary to India, agreed with McGavran’s assessment (p. 124):

The criticism of the “mission station” strategy has a great deal of force. It is also true that missions have, in McGavran’s phrase, tended to put perfecting before discipling and thereby fallen into the old legalist trap. They have become proponents of a new law rather than a liberating gospel. The church has been made to appear more like a school where examinations have to be passed than a place where the community meets to celebrate its freedom.

My purpose in writing this article is not to make hidden, indirect criticisms of UBF. To avoid any misunderstandings, I will tell you directly what I think. Speaking as a North American disciple of UBF missionaries, I have seen the missionaries’ dedication and sacrifice firsthand. I respect and love our missionaries. It is obvious that they have passed on many cultural influences to their converts. That is an inevitable result of cross-cultural witness, and it is not inherently bad. The fertilization of one culture with gospel seeds from another is, in my opinion, an essential part of God’s overall plan for the people and nations of the world. This cross-cultural aspect of UBF was very helpful in my own spiritual development.

Yet it is impossible to look at UBF chapters in North America and not see resemblances to the mission stations. Any North American who visits a UBF worship service for the first time instinctively feels that we are different, and we wear those differences as a badge of honor. Newcomers hear this message loud and clear: “You are very welcome here. But if you enter this fellowship, we expect you to become like us. Your standing in our community will rise and you will be rewarded as you accept and adopt our methods, manners, standards and traditions.” Of course, we never think of them as our traditions; we call them “God’s” mission,” “God’s” commands, and “Bible” principles. By the language that we use, we canonize and absolutize our ways of doing things. Use of that language is itself rewarded and taken as a sign of growing faith and commitment to Christ. But anyone who makes significant contact with Christ-loving people outside of UBF knows that many of the things that we hold dear are not absolutes but simply our own manners, methods and traditions.

When I came into UBF nearly three decades ago, I was, as McGavran observed, detached from my American Christian heritage and transplanted into an alien culture. I neglected and severed relationships with friends, family and neighbors. This detachment from my own people was a consequence of the way that Samuel Lee ran the ministry during the 1980’s and 1990’s. It drastically changed my life and brought me to Christ, but it left me emotionally isolated from people and confused about my identity, and it limited my influence and Christian witness to society outside of UBF. Now that I realize what has happened, I am trying to recover that lost identity and repair relationships with people whom I wrongly ignored.

And to me it seems undeniable that the factors cited by McGavran are stifling growth. It has just been reported that our average Sunday worship attendance in North America increased about 4% in 2010. I wonder what that figure would be if you remove the effect of inflow of missionaries from Korea and the natural increase from children born to UBF families coming of age. Regardless, we have not been seeing the growth that many had hoped for, and we have fallen far short of the target of doubling the ministry by 2010. To what do we attribute this slow growth? Reading through the yearly reports appearing on ubf.org, the top reasons cited by our missionaries for falling short are not praying enough, not studying the Bible enough, and so on. These ideas are reinforced by messages from leaders that exhort members to work harder, sacrifice more, recover zeal for the gospel, have an absolute attitude, etc. Everywhere I look, the assumption is that our mission strategy is impeccably sound, and all problems are due to individuals who did not get with the program and carry it out with enough intensity and sincerity. There is an elephant in the room, but no one seems willing to talk about it. That elephant is our overall mission strategy. This is the reason why I have been claiming that we lack a coherent theology of mission. We lack this theology because we trained ourselves not to discuss it, not even to think about it.

The mission station strategy is built on the assumption that the gospel message travels in just one direction, flowing from the missionaries to the converts. Sooner or later, as the community matures, there must be a backflow as the missionaries are re-evangelized by the converts. We see that happening in the early church beginning in Acts chapter 10. The passage that is often titled “The Conversion of Cornelius” could just as well be called “The Conversion of Peter.” The divinely arranged encounter between the centurion and the apostle shook Peter to the core. It challenged his lifelong assumptions about purity and righteousness and brought him to a new, deeper understanding of the gospel. Peter’s first reaction to the Holy Spirit’s vision was, “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean” (Acts 10:14). That reaction reveals that, although he was a committed follower of Jesus, he still regarded his adherence to the law as a badge of honor, something that made him better than others in the sight of God. To see a non-law abiding Gentile be instantly accepted into God’s family made him realize that, even after being a Christian for many years, his own standing before God was still not based on anything he does but on what Christ has done for him. The gospel of Jesus Christ is, from first to last, a gospel of grace and faith alone.

The tensions in a cross-cultural ministry are inevitable. Eventually there must be a Jerusalem Council, an open dialogue between foreign missionaries and native converts, to inquire of God and enlarge their understanding of the gospel. I think we can all agree that the gospel must bring tangible, visible change to the lives of those who receive it. But what should the fruit of the gospel look like? Should the fruit of the gospel planted on Korean soil look just like the fruit on American soil? How different can they be?

The participants at the original Jerusalem Council thought hard about this and concluded that Jewish and Gentile Christians should look different. Yet they were also aware of the need for compromise to maintain friendships and spiritual unity. In the letter that James drafted to the Gentile Christians, he urged them “to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.” (Acts 15:29) That list of prohibitions includes behavior that we still regard as sinful (sexual immorality) and behavior that we now see as benign (eating of blood — Have you ever tried “black pudding”? It’s quite, um, interesting). So even the outcome of the Jerusalem Council was not an absolute ruling that could remain in place for all time. I take that as a meaningful principle. The ethical requirements of the gospel can never be fixed. Some aspects will remain constant over time, but other aspects will have to change.

And that raises another very important question. Who gets to decide what those ethical requirements are? That is not an easy one. So the series shall continue…

First, circumcision of males was the definitive sign of being counted among God’s people. Hebrews who refused to be circumcised were no longer Hebrew (Gen 17:4). And throughout the Old Testament, the term “uncircumcised” is used as a synonym for ungodly (see, for example, 1Sa 17:16). Uncircumcised men could not enter the temple, nor could they eat the Passover (Ex 12:48). The Passover depicts salvation and deliverance. The fact that the Passover lamb – a powerful symbol of the crucified Jesus – could not be eaten by uncircumcised men suggests that circumcision may still be applicable under the New Covenant.

Now some of you might be saying, “Circumcision is just a ceremony and an outward symbol; what God really wants is for people to circumcise their hearts.” Yes, that is true; the physical sign of circumcision should point to an inner reality. But the fact that circumcision has a deeper meaning does not mean that the physical sign should be abandoned. (The fact that baptism and the Lord’s Supper have deeper meaning does not mean that they are useless or unnecessary. On the contrary, it is precisely because these signs are deeply meaningful that Christians have practiced them from the beginning.) Although the Old Testament repeatedly mentions circumcision of the heart, the physical sign is still always present. For example, in Ezekiel 44:9, God commands, “No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary.”

Others may say, “Christians are not bound by the law, because Jesus has fulfilled the law.” Perhaps. But let’s put aside the writings of Paul, because his letters had not yet been written at the time of the Jerusalem Council. (Galatians could have been written about that time. But even if it was, it would not yet have been accepted as authoritative, because the purpose of that Council was to decide whether Paul’s view of circumcision was correct.) What did Jesus say? Did Jesus overturn the law? In Matthew 5:17, he said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Does the fact that we live under a gospel of grace mean that we should ignore the law? Many Christians would say that we are bound to keep the Ten Commandments. The context of Matthew 5:17 is the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus actually strengthens the requirements of the law, holding Christians to an even higher standard.

In certain cases, Jesus did overturn laws. He nullified the dietary laws, declaring that all foods are clean (Mk 7:19). He modified our understanding of the Sabbath by declaring, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mk 2:27-28). But he didn’t say anything against circumcision. Even if we claim that Jesus overturned the whole law of Moses, that would still not settle the matter, because circumcision predates Moses by about 500 years.

And we cannot ignore the most obvious piece of evidence: Jesus was circumcised! His parents circumcised him in accordance with the law (Lk 2:21). If Jesus submitted himself to this requirement, shouldn’t his disciples follow his example?

The stance that some Christians adopt toward the Bible is reflected in the saying: “God says it, I believe it, that settles it!” They think it is best to approach the Bible without thinking too hard, without getting too complicated or too intellectual. If we read the text plainly and literally, just as it is, then shouldn’t the meaning and implications be obvious? If only it were that simple! The Bible is the inspired word of God, and it has an amazing capacity to speak to people of all ages and backgrounds. One does not need a Ph.D. in theology to receive understanding from the Bible and be transformed by it. But there is a flipside to that reality. If one does happen to have formal education, a background in theology, or a long history of personal experience and interaction with the Bible, then a plain, simple, uncomplicated reading of Scripture may not settle the matter at all; it may only raise deeper questions that should not be ignored, because they are the very questions that the Holy Spirit wants us to consider. The simple understanding that inspires and empowers early in our spiritual journey may be woefully inadequate later in life. That principle applies both to individuals and to communities. It is the very reason why we have to keep going back to the Bible, not just to reinforce what we already have learned, but to question it, to refresh and deepen our understanding and wrestle with the fundamental issues of faith.

Fortunately for us, the matter of circumcision was decided in Acts chapter 15 and was thoroughly explained by the apostle Paul, and those writings are now part of the Scripture record. At the Jerusalem Council, the widespread understanding of the Bible was overturned by the witness of the Spirit. The Apostle Peter stood up and recalled how, several years earlier, the Holy Spirit led him to Cornelius, a God-fearing uncircumcised Gentile. Against all of his Jewish sensibilities, he entered the home of Cornelius and explained the gospel. The Holy Spirit came upon Cornelius and his household, and they began to speak in tongues. Peter ordered that they be baptized, and Peter stayed with them for several days, eating Gentile food which was decidedly unclean (Acts 10:1-48). Peter’s mind was changed when he saw the undeniable work of the Holy Spirit among the uncircumcised. When Peter finished speaking, Paul and Barnabas told of “signs and wonders,” further evidence of the working of the Spirit among the uncircumcised (Acts 15:12). The decision was sealed when James, the brother of Jesus and highly respected leader of the church in Jerusalem, lent his support, drawing upon the prophetic words of Amos 9:11-12.

The Jerusalem Council is the high-water mark, the theological crescendo of the book of Acts. If the apostles’ decision had gone the opposite way, Christianity would never have broken out of the Jewish mold; it would have remained a sect of Judaism and could not have spread across the globe.

In a comment on Part 2 of this series, Henoch wondered if these situations still arise today. We now have the writings of Paul and the other apostles; the New Testament is complete, and the canon of Scripture is closed. Given what we now see in the whole Bible, is it still possible for the witness of the Holy Spirit to overturn the prevailing understanding of what Scripture means?

The answer to this clearly yes. The creative ministry of the Holy Spirit continues to breathe fresh understanding into the Church, sometimes contradicting the assumptions of the past. A great example of this is human slavery. For eighteen centuries, Christians persisted in believing that slavery was acceptable, or at least allowable. A plain reading of Scripture can easily support that view. Through the prophetic witness of William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and many others, the church finally came to believe that slavery is fundamentally incompatible with the gospel of Christ and the God-given dignity of human beings.

I am not arguing that we should throw away our Bibles and assume that whatever pops into our heads, or whatever seems to be happening in the church today, is a movement of the Holy Spirit. That is not what I mean, not by a long shot. We should never throw away our Bibles. What we should throw away is the notion that understanding and interpreting the Bible is easy. What we desperately need today is deeper, more thoughtful Bible study combined with greater sensitivity to the witness of the Spirit. We need this not merely as individuals, but as a community. Scripture was given to the Church as a whole, and the Holy Spirit was given to the Church as a whole. Interpreting the Bible and discerning the work of the Spirit are tasks to be undertaken by the Christian community. And that Christian community is not static. It expands and changes over time as the kingdom of God grows and spreads.

Which brings me to my next point. The early Christians would never have had to deal with circumcision if Paul and Barnabas had not obeyed the calling of the Holy Spirit to carry the gospel to the nations. It was not until the Church engaged in cross-cultural witness that it had to consider these fundamental issues of how the gospel relates to law. If Christians remain in isolated in sectarian, monocultural ghettos, they are easily lulled into thinking that they already know everything, and that their present understanding of the Bible is ultimate truth. But when they leave their ghettos and get out in the world – when they enter into relationships with sincere believers who look, act, speak and behave very differently from them – then the work of the Holy Spirit that they encounter begins to challenge their assumptions and their theology. When they encounter converts whose doctrines seem questionable, and whose lifestyles appear to be worldly, compromised, unholy, and wrong, and yet see that these people really love Jesus, the encounter can be deeply unsettling. It may lead to a Wall, a crisis of faith. But out of that crisis something beautiful can grow.

It is at the treacherous three-way intersection of hermeneutics, pneumatology and missiology — Word, Spirit and Mission — that the gospel really comes alive. This is where we begin to see how outrageous and scandalous are the teachings of Jesus, and how shocking are the implications of the gospel, both for the unconverted world and for the Church. This is why I think it is exciting to be in UBF today. The problems and tensions that we are experiencing should, in light of Acts chapter 15, be a prelude to exciting developments in our ministry and in the greater Body of Christ. But to allow those developments to come, we will need to carefully watch and listen to the witness of the Spirit. We must be openminded enough to see how the Spirit is working among young converts and disciples, the next generation whose experiences and perspectives are very different from the first.

In case you are wondering, I am not just making this stuff up in my head. This series of articles on Word, Spirit, Gospel and Mission is loosely based the insights of the missiologist Lesslie Newbigin, especially those in his book The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission.

In the next installments of this series, we will travel (virtually, of course) to India and to Africa and see what the triumphs and mistakes of western missionaries reveals about the nature of the gospel. Stay tuned…

To feel the full impact of what happened at the Jerusalem Council, we need to read history forward, not backward. From our present vantage point, we already know how it turned out. With twenty centuries of church history and theology behind us, the “correct” course of action seems perfectly obvious. But at that meeting, the outcome was far from certain. Church members were genuinely confused, and faithful servants of God had staked out positions on both sides. Try to put aside what you already know and stand in the shoes of those who were there. Weigh the arguments as fairly as you can, and honestly ask yourself the question, “If I were at the Jerusalem Council, what would I have been thinking, and what decision would I have made?”

About five years earlier, Paul and Barnabas were sent out from Antioch to carry the gospel to other places (Acts 13:1-3). Whenever they entered a city, they looked for a Jewish community and went to the synagogue. For them, this was not a matter of practicality but of theology. Paul understood that the Jews were God’s chosen people, those whom God had specially prepared to receive the gospel and bear it to the world. So Paul made it a point to always preach to the Jews first (Ro 1:16).

Diaspora Jews had settled throughout the world, and Greek-speaking Gentiles took notice of them. Quite a few Greeks were attracted to Judaism. They could see that it bred sincerity, piety and virtue. But Greeks found it extremely difficult to convert, and for good reason. To convert meant, first of all, that a man had to be circumcised. Circumcision was the sign of entering God’s family, and it was considered non-negotiable. To refuse circumcision was to be cut off from God’s people (Gen 17:14). Second, the new convert had to commit to keeping the law of Moses. Faithful keeping of the law would radically change every aspect of one’s personal and public life. Law-abiding Jews could not freely associate with non-Jews. They could not entire a Gentile’s house without becoming unclean, and to eat with a Gentile would become unthinkable (Acts 11:3). If a Gentile actually converted to Judaism, it would effectively cut him off from his friends and his family (unless they converted too), and it would pull him out of the community he had known all his life. For this reason, there were many Gentiles who were “sitting on the fence.” They were attracted to Judaism and loved the teachings of the Bible. But they found it impossible to take that final step of conversion; the personal, social cost was just too high. These Gentiles were called “God fearers” (e.g., Acts 13:26). Nearly every synagogue had at least some Gentile God-fearers who came regularly and sat in a place that had been specially reserved for them.

When Paul and Barnabas would enter a synagogue and speak about Jesus, the response of the Jews would be tepid and mixed. But to the God-fearing Gentiles, the message was sweet music in their ears. They were amazed to learn that God would accept them as they were. By grace alone they could be welcomed into his kingdom if they put their trust in Jesus Christ. Coming to Jesus did not require them to sever their relationships or give up their cultural identity. This teaching created such a stir among God-fearers that enormous crowds of Gentiles would show up at the synagogue to hear the Apostle Paul. When the Jews saw great hordes of Gentiles pouring into the synagogue, they felt terrified and threatened (Acts 13:44-45). They realized that if what Paul was saying was true — that the door of salvation was now open to anyone by faith in Jesus Christ alone — then their faith community would be overrun by people with lifestyles radically different from theirs. These new believers, with their worldly customs and lenient attitudes, might cause community standards of holiness to slip. The synagogue leaders knew they would lose control. It would spell the end of the synagogue as they knew it.

The predictable result was that, when Paul preached in a synagogue, most of the Jews and especially the leaders would reject the gospel message. But large numbers of Gentiles would receive it with joy. The new believers in Christ would have to leave the synagogue and meet somewhere else, setting up their own faith community nearby. Very soon after the new church was established, Paul would appoint leaders and elders and leave the matter of running the church to them. He would hug them and say goodbye and go on to a new place. But he would continue to pray for them and stay in touch through occasional letters and visits.

After Paul’s departure, however, many questions would arise. At the heart of them all was one huge question: What were the ethical implications of the gospel? The gospel placed everyone under the Lordship of Christ. To follow Christ was to be called out from the old ways of sin to a new life of holiness and obedience in love. (The Greek word ekklesia, which we translate as “church,” literally means “called out.”) Everyone could agree on that in principle. But what was the new community supposed to look like? How were Christians actually supposed to live? The converts who knew the Scriptures best were the Jewish Christians who had studied the Bible all their lives. They had strong notions about what constituted a holy and pious life. With their strong cultural identity and superior knowledge of the Bible, it was inevitable that Jewish expressions of devotion and piety would begin to emerge as the multicultural church struggled to define itself. Those expressions would be reinforced by church leaders who visited from Jerusalem, the birthplace of the gospel and the center of Jewish Christianity.

So within just a few years, or even a few months, this idea began to take hold: The Gentile converts ought to be circumcised.

This idea was opposed by Paul from the beginning. But other leaders were not so sure. No one had worked out a coherent theology of how the gospel was supposed to interact with human culture. Friendships and loyalties were severely tested as different opinions swirled about. Even the Apostle Peter and Barnabas had been pressured and swayed by those who claimed that uncircumcised believers were not full members of the Christian fellowship (Gal 2:11-14).

As the tensions and tempers began to flare, I have no doubt that believers began to ask, “What does the Bible have to say?” Perhaps the wisest among them were saying, “Let’s go back to the Bible.” And others would have appealed to WWJD: “What would Jesus do?” Or better yet, “What would Jesus have us do?” Surely they were asking the apostles, “Did Jesus ever say anything about this?” It is likely that none of the gospels and none of the epistles, except possibly Paul’s letter to the Galatians, had been written by this time. Believers must have combed through the Old Testament and the oral traditions of Jesus with great sincerity, looking for clues and divine guidance. As they did so, what would they have found?

Try to put yourself in their shoes. Try to erase from your mind — and from your Bible — everything that comes after Acts chapter 14. Suppose you had been asked to render an opinion on what the biblically correct position is. Suppose that you were chosen for this task because you have extensive knowledge of the Scriptures. Therefore it is likely that you are a Jewish Christian, a circumcised male and keeper of the law. You place great value on spiritual disciplines such as daily prayer and Bible reading, because those disciplines have kept you grounded in faith since you were a child. Factor in your personality and how you have approached similar situations in your own life thus far. Factor in your beliefs about the authority of Scripture, how you feel about your own group’s religious traditions and spiritual heritage, your ideas about holiness (remember: holy can mean “separate”), the need to maintain ethical and moral principles and standards, and your understanding of the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20).

Be honest, and don’t peek at Acts chapter 15. What do you think you would have done?

Personally, I believe that statement. And I’ll venture to guess that you do as well.

But now consider this one: “The Holy Spirit is fully God. Refusing to follow the leading of the Spirit is an act of disobedience against God.”

That second statement is undoubtedly true; its logic is unassailable. But if you are like me, that second one makes you more nervous than the first. It makes me nervous because I know far less about the Spirit than I do about the Word. I can open a Bible anytime I want. The words of Scripture are always visible and accessible. If I don’t understand the meaning of a passage, I can ask knowledgeable people and see what commentaries have to say. But the Holy Spirit is invisible and mysterious. I know he is there, because the Bible says so, but my experience of him is far more tenuous. Over the years, I have acquired habits and methods for interacting with the Bible. But where are my methods for interacting with the Spirit? If the Spirit was leading me to go this way or that way, how could I test it to know that it was real? How could I avoid being deceived?

In a church that strongly emphasizes Bible study, it’s common to think of biblical teachings as objective, clear truth but to see the Spirit’s leading as subjective and ambiguous. The Word seems hard, a matter of fact, but the Spirit seems soft, a matter of opinion. If that is our perception, then we may think that disobeying the Bible is very serious, but disobeying the Spirit is not too bad. After all, who among us can really say when or how the Spirit is leading? Bible teachers are everywhere in UBF, but Spirit teachers are rather difficult to find.

Yet the logic of the second statement is still incontrovertible. To refuse to follow the Holy Spirit is a act of rebellion against God. If you need some Bible references on that, check out Mark 3:29, Acts 5:3-5 and Acts 7:51.

Now allow me to pose a tricky question. Suppose that the Bible is pointing you in one direction, but the Holy Spirit is pointing you in the opposite way. The Word says “Yes,” but the Spirit says, “No.” If there is a tension or discrepancy between the two, then which one should you follow, the Word or the Spirit?

“Impossible!” you say. “This question is a false choice. The Bible is the authoritative word of God, and its words were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit will never contradict the Word, because God will never oppose himself.”

Yes, that is correct. In reality, the Spirit always agrees with the Word. But one may contradict our perception of the other. The Bible may contradict our understanding of what the Spirit is doing. And the Spirit may contradict our understanding of what the Bible teaches. Discrepancies like that do. And when they do, we are faced with a difficult choice: Should we stick to our present understanding of the Bible? Or should we bend our biblical convictions and follow the apparent lead of the Spirit?

Let me guess. You are inclined to say, “If there appears to be a contradiction between the two, then I will stand by what the Bible says.” I’m guessing this because, if you are in a church or ministry like mine, you tend to think of the Scripture as hard and the Spirit as soft. This is a common understanding of the principle of sola scriptura: The Bible is our final authority in matters of faith and practice.

Yet the Bible itself sheds light on how to answer this question. And the answer that the Bible gives might surprise you. There are examples in Scripture where the Spirit speaks loudly, and he is contradicting the community’s understanding of what Scripture says. It happens in both the Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament, there is a situation where faithful, exemplary Christians were convinced that the Bible was commanding them to do something. The biblical case for their opinion was airtight, or so it appeared at that time. But the Holy Spirit was pointing them in the opposite direction. If they made the choice that looked safe, sticking with what they believed the Bible said, they would have appeared to be God-fearing and righteous. But they would have begun to lose their mission as the Church and endangered their understanding of the gospel itself.

When Word and Spirit appear to conflict, it is not a given that Word must win. Spirit will occasionally have to trump Word. This realization can make us uncomfortable. But if the Holy Spirit is fully God as we profess, then he is a creative person who may lead us in directions that we do not expect. If we never allow the creative power of the Spirit to challenge our deeply held assumptions about what the Bible says and means, then we are not showing proper reverence to the Word or to the Spirit, and sooner or later we will become… disobedient.

I’ll say more about this in Part 2. Stay tuned.

These are genuine questions for which I do not yet have answers. I hope that these do not sound like leading questions. A leading question is a question that presupposes what the correct answer should be. Of course, I do have some opinions of my own about how I would answer them. But I am willing to keep an open mind, and I am ready to hear the opinions of others and be swayed by them. I do not think that any of these questions has a single, correct answer, and I don’t expect everyone to agree with one another or with me. But I believe that the leaders of an organization like ours ought to be willing to consider and discuss hard questions like these. Or at least let us know where they stand.

1. On our official website, UBF is described as “a non-denominational, evangelistic campus organization.” But in most places, it has taken on the characteristics of a church. Members stay involved beyond their student years; they tithe; they do not attend other churches; they marry, have children, and bring their children to UBF; and so on. Yet campus ministry is at the front and center of our meetings, worship services, conferences, etc. to the extent that many members feel that, if they are not students or actively serving in campus ministry, UBF is not the right place for them. Is that the message that we should continue to send our members? Should that message be refined or modified in any way?

2. On a related theme: The sign above the main Chicago center says that UBF is “A Missionary Church.” It seems to me that this might be a reasonable way to describe who and what we are. But if so, what exactly does it mean? Does this mean that we are

a) a church planted by missionaries and run by missionaries?

b) a church that serves missionaries and their children?

c) a church in which many or most of the members are expected to become missionaries?

d) a church whose purpose is to train and send missionaries to other places?

If the answer is c), then is that a reasonable expectation? If the answer is d), then what is the relationship of the church to the community in which it sits? Does the church mainly draw resources (people, funds, etc.) out of the local community and use them for mission somewhere else? If so, will the attention of the church ever be focused on serving the local community, or will it always be looking elsewhere?

3. Consider a campus ministry started by Christians in their own country, and then consider a campus ministry started by missionaries in a foreign land. Should there be any significant differences between these two types of campus ministries? If so, what are the differences, and how should those differences be reflected in the qualifications and training expected of ministry leaders?

4. If missionaries plant a church in a foreign land, should the missionaries automatically become the leaders and managers of that church? If so, for how long?

5. If missionaries raise disciples in a foreign land whose culture is significantly different from their own, to what extent should the disciples be expected to adopt the lifestyle, attitudes, and values of the missionaries? For example, should they be expected to speak, dress and act as the missionaries do? Evangelize as they do? Marry as they do? Raise children as they do? Relate to the broader culture as they do? Attend meetings and events whose time, format and agenda are determined by the missionaries? Who should decide such issues, and how should they get decided?

6. If missionaries come to a nation, community, or campus that already has a Christian heritage and a significant number of Christian churches and organizations, what should the missionaries be doing? Should they be setting up their own independent ministries? If so, how should the leaders of existing churches and organizations feel about this? What is the benefit of having a ministry run by foreign missionaries operating independently of domestic churches rather than partnering with them?

7. Is it reasonable to expect that most or all of the committed members of a UBF chapter will be actively engaged in campus evangelism, fishing, Bible teaching, etc.? If so, then how can that be reconciled with the teachings of the New Testament about the variety of roles and spiritual gifts within the Body of Christ? If not, then what should our members be doing, and how will the value of their work be acknowledged?

8. UBF in Uganda has been operating a medical mission. Lately, some have been suggesting that UBF take new initiatives to build schools, training institutes, and so on. How does that work fit in to our understanding of the Great Commission? Are works of compassion to serve the local community something that we want to encourage because they have intrinsic value? Are they important only if they somehow contribute to our work of campus evangelism? Or are they seen as a potential distraction and hindrance to campus evangelism?

9. Most UBF chapters are financially self-supporting and autonomous; major decisions are often made by a single chapter director. How should a chapter director be held accountable to his members and to the larger organization? When conflicts arise between members and their director, how should those conflicts be resolved? When conflicts arise between local chapters, or between a local chapter and a national or regional director, how should those conflicts be resolved?

10. Does UBF have any accountability to the greater Body of Christ? If so, how should that accountability be implemented and realized?

11. What are the criteria by which the success of a ministry is judged? Are we mostly concerned about size and growth in numbers? What metrics should we use to evaluate the health of a UBF chapter?

12. What are we to conclude from the recent painful events in India? Were mistakes made? Are there lessons to be learned about leadership, conflict resolution, etc.?

13. Six years ago, we were given the prayer topic to double the ministry by 2010. With few exceptions, that has not happened in our North American chapters. Should this be regarded as a failure? If so, is it a failue of the leadership or the membership? Is it a sign that God is no longer blessing us? A sign that we need to rethink and retool? Or should we just ignore the fact and move on? (Memo to the next General Director: Ignoring this and moving on might be the easiest course of action. But it has a significant cost. It sends the message that the General Director’s prayer topics are just suggestions and don’t have to be taken seriously.)

14. As UBF approaches the 50 year mark, our attention has been turned to raising the next generation of leaders. Many have been talking about how to pass on the heritage, legacy and vision of UBF to the next generation. The term “pass on” suggests that the legacy is already fully understood, and the task is merely to educate, train and inspire the next generation with that legacy. Is it reasonable for one generation to decide what the direction and vision of the next generation ought to be? When, how and by whom should the direction of any given generation be decided?

15. UBF in Korea was not controlled, managed or funded by western missionaries. It was a self-supporting, independent and indigenous student gospel movement whose message and vision inspired Korean students. If we are to be faithful to the roots and heritage of UBF, shouldn’t we be making it our top priority to indigenize the UBF ministry in each nation, allowing the native leaders to find and develop the unique message that will inspire students? If so, what steps can be taken to move decisively in that direction?

16. If this is not the correct time, place or manner to raise difficult questions like these, then exactly when, where and how should they be raised?

Those are my questions for the next General Director. What are yours?

The tensions between these groups surfaced at the beginning of Acts chapter 6, when Hellenistic Jews pointed out that Hebraic widows were being taken care of by the church, but the Hellenistic widows were not. Acts 6:1 (NIV 2010) reads:

In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

Notice what this verse actually says. The matter raised by the Hellenistic Jews was not an idle or godless complaint. Their grievance was genuine, because their widows actually were being discriminated against. We don’t know how this happened, but it displays a lack of sensitivity and fairness on the part of the church leadership. Wagner believes that this issue, the inequitable distribution of food, was merely a symptom of a deeper and more serious problem. Hellenistic Jews comprised a very large part of the early church, and their donations of cash and property were keeping the church financially solvent. Yet their interests and views were not being represented among the church’s leaders, because all twelve of the apostles were Hebraic Jews. At the beginning, it had to be so, because these were the men handpicked by Jesus to be witnesses to the world. But as the demographic character of the church changed, the style and composition of its leadership needed to change.

Wagner makes a statement that is profoundly challenging and provocative: Even the twelve apostles were ethnocentric.

This statement should not be taken as criticism of the apostles. They were men of exemplary faith and character. Yet it is an undeniable fact that, because of their upbringing and historical situation, they lacked cross-cultural and missiological sensitivity. The apostles were born and raised as Hebraic Jews, and their identity was closely bound to keeping the details of Mosaic law. They had been taught, quite correctly, that the Jews were God’s chosen people, and that God’s revelation and salvation came through Israel (Ps 147:20). The notion that the doors of salvation had suddenly been thrown open to the whole world – that God was now ready to accept people of any tribe, tongue and nation without precondition through faith in Christ alone – was truly a radical departure from their Old Testament sensibilities. It was going to take them quite a few years to adjust to the new work of the Holy Spirit that was going on around them in the post-Pentecost era. Meanwhile, it was very natural and understandable for them to exhibit ethnocentric attitudes, believing that the Hebraic Jewish lifestyle to which they (and even Jesus) conformed represented the purest, best, and most biblically correct way of life on the planet.

But the Hellenistic Jews thought differently. As they grew in faith and maturity, they could not remain as sheep, sitting under the apostles’ authority forever. Indeed, the Holy Spirit would not allow them to remain comfortable there. They needed to share in the blessings and responsibilities of leadership as full partners in the gospel which they had inherited. God had prepared a special mission for them, to become a bridge between the Jewish and Gentile worlds.

To the apostles’ credit, they recognized that a real problem had arisen in the church, and they dealt with it in a reasonable manner. They convened a meeting of the disciples and appointed seven new leaders, giving them responsibility for handling the matter. It appears that all seven of them (traditionally called deacons, from the Greek diakonos, which means “servant”) were Hellenistic Jews, because all seven had Greek names.

The role that these seven men played in the leadership of the church is a matter of dispute. Some commentators believe that they remained subservient to the apostles, carrying out menial and practical tasks (“waiting on tables”, as mentioned in verse 2) so that the apostles could remain focused on prayer and ministry of the word. But Wagner believes that these seven were not merely assistants. Indeed, the account by Luke emphasizes their high degree of spiritual qualification. They were known to be full of wisdom, faith and the Holy Spirit. The next two and a half chapters of Acts are devoted to the influence of two of these men: Stephen, who because of his powerful preaching became the first Christian martyr, and Philip, who carried the gospel to Samaria and to the Ethiopian eunuch.

Wagner believes that these seven newly appointed leaders stood alongside the apostles, sharing apostolic authority by ministering to the Hellenistic Jews as the original apostles continued to minister to the Hebraic Jews. He characterizes this event as a division in governance, an amicable split that eased the ethnic tensions in the church, helping the Christian message to break out from the shackles of Hebraic culture so that the gospel could spread beyond Jerusalem and Judea.

After the appointing of seven Hellenistic leaders, the church entered a period of rapid growth. Luke remarks in Acts 6:7:

So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.

If the leadership of the early church had not been diversified, would this dramatic growth have still happened? Not likely, says Wagner. As a specialist in the study of church growth, Wagner pays close attention to Acts 6:7 and similar verses which are scattered throughout the book of Acts. One lesson that he draws from this passage, and from his study of worldwide missions, is that the cultural backgrounds and attitudes of church leaders really do matter. In a more perfect world, Christians of different cultures should be able to serve the Lord side by side without any disagreements or conflicts, fully understanding and accepting one another without any discrimination or judgment whatsoever. Multicultural ministry is an ideal to which we ought to aspire, and when it happens it is indeed a beautiful thing. But two thousand years of history have shown that this tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Cultural differences and misunderstandings between people-groups abound, even within the church. Realistically, it not always possible or desirable for groups that are culturally divergent to remain under the same ecclesiastical authority, especially if the composition of church leadership does not reflect the diversity of its members or the society that the church is seeking to evangelize. No group of believers can sit comfortably under the leadership of foreign missionaries indefinitely, and missionaries who ignore this fact will inadvertently prevent their own ministries from growing. Wagner writes:

One of the most difficult lessons for cross-cultural missionaries to learn is that when they plant a church in a culture different from their own, the leadership of the new church must come from those rooted in the second culture or else the church will not grow and develop as it should. Missionaries may understandably assume that because they have been Christians longer and know the Bible better and pray more and adhere more rigidly to norms of Christian behavior than do their new converts, they therefore can, and should, assume leadership of the new church. They do so, however, to their own detriment and they inadvertently hinder the spread of the gospel over the long haul (pp 142-143).

The Apostle Paul seems to have understood this principle. Whenever Paul planted the gospel in a new place, he made it a high priority to raise native leaders and turn decision-making over to them as soon as possible. When Paul did so, the churches that he planted experienced difficulties and growing pains, as his letters to these churches attest. But Paul’s quick handing over of leadership freed him to continue to use his unique missionary gift to carry the gospel to new places, while allowing the new churches to develop organically into faith communities that could dramatically impact the societies around them. Cross-cultural missionaries are gifted at carrying the gospel from one people-group to another. But natives will instinctively know better than the missionaries how to contextualize that gospel in their own culture.

Wagner’s book is a chapter-by-chapter commentary on the book of Acts with two special twists. First, he places strong emphasis on the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, discussing the extent to which these gifts are present in the Church today. Second, he deals extensively with issues of contextualization – the challenges faced by missionaries as they bring the good news of Jesus Christ into human cultures radically different from their own.

With respect to the Holy Spirit, Wagner began his academic career as a cessationist. That is, he believed that miraculous gifts of tongues, prophesy and healing ceased to be part of normal Christian experience after the age of the apostles. During his tenure at Fuller, however, he revised his views and became a continuationist, believing that many modern-day displays of miraculous gifts are authentic.

The tension between cessationism and continuationism is a fascinating and important subject, but we will leave that to another day. Here I will summarize some of Wagner’s comments on evangelism and culture.

Wagner describes three different kinds of evangelism, which he designates E-1, E-2, and E-3.

• E-1 evangelism is monocultural. An E-1 evangelist shares his faith with other people within his own people group. No significant barriers of language or culture are crossed.
• E-2 evangelism crosses mild cultural barriers. An example of E-2 evangelism would be an Anglo-American preaching the gospel in Australia.
• E-3 evangelism means carrying the gospel to radically different culture. For example, a Canadian missionary serving in China. Or a British pastor reaching out to Hindus and Muslims in London.

This classification as E-1, E-2 and E-3 is a fairly standard terminology not invented by the author. But he does make two major points which I found interesting and compelling.

His first point is that most converts to Christianity have been made through E-1 evangelism; this has always been the case, and it always will. E-2 and E-3 evangelism are necessary to sow the seeds of the gospel in a new place, but dramatic church growth will rarely take place until the message of Christ takes root among native leaders who begin to evangelize their own.

Examples of this are easy to find. For example, Protestant missionaries successfully brought the gospel to Korea in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but mass conversion of large numbers of South Koreans did not take place until indigenous Korean Christian movements (including UBF) sprang up in the 1960’s.

Another example is the rapid spread of Christianity in modern-day China. Missionaries to China are playing only a minor role in this; most of the growth is taking place through the multiplication of indigenous house churches.

Wagner argues that the gospel spreads more effectively and naturally through E-1 evangelism than through E-2 and E-3. When E-1 evangelism is happening, conversion to Christianity does not require newcomers to cross significant racial, linguistic or cultural barriers. They will not need to disavow their current ways of life to adopt radically new patterns of behavior presented by foreign missionaries. Most of their relationships with family members, friends and neighbors can remain intact. Wherever true E-1 evangelism is going on, as opposed to E-2 and E-3, the decision to accept Christ remains a religious decision to join the family of God, rather than a cultural or social decision to leave one people group and join another.

Wagner’s second point is that E-1 evangelism is a general mission given to everyone in the Church, but E-2 and E-3 evangelism is a special calling that only certain individuals have. There is little excuse for Christians not to engage in E-1 evangelism; in one way or another, every believer ought to be sharing his faith in Christ with the people around him. Therefore, a healthy church will usually be growing in numbers, because E-1 evangelism will be naturally taking place day in and day out.

But E-2 and E-3 evangelism are another matter. These are a specific ministry which require a specific gift. Wagner calls it the gift of missionary, and he defines it as follows: “The gift of missionary is a special ability that God gives to certain believers to use whatever other spiritual gifts they have in a different culture.”

Wagner estimates that only about 1% of Christians have this gift. He admits that this is just a rough guess, based on his own experiences and impressions. The figure of 1% is unimportant. His major point is that, while everyone in the church should be sharing his or her faith within the immediate community, E-2 and E-3 evangelism are a special mission to which only a few are called.

Interestingly, Jesus was an E-1 evangelist. He did not seem to have the gift of missionary. Or, if he had it, he chose not to use it during his three-year public ministry, because as he said in Matthew 15:24, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

And his twelve apostles were also E-1 evangelists. They ministered primarily to Hebraic Jews like themselves. On a few special occasions, God did use them to evangelize beyond their culture. For example, on the day of Pentecost, they received supernatural ability to communicate the gospel to Grecian Jews from many parts of the Roman Empire in their own native tongues. Another example occurs in Acts chapter 10, when God calls on Peter to evangelize the Roman centurion Cornelius, who was a Gentile. This was a special event, and Peter was prompted to do it by a special vision from heaven. Afterward, however, Peter seemed to return to his usual ministry to the Jews, and wholesale evangelization of Gentiles did not begin until the commissioning of Paul and Barnabas as missionaries in Acts chapter 13.

Although we would like to think that the message of Christ breaks down barriers and creates unity in the human race, Christian history has shown — and the book of Acts also testifies to this — that differences among people-groups are stark, and significant hurdles must be overcome whenever Christians from one group attempt to evangelize another.

This is the fundamental problem of missiology. When E-2 and E-3 missionaries carry the gospel to another place, how do they contextualize the message and implement it there? Which of their own beliefs and practices are non-negotiable and must be carried into the new context, and which must be sacrificed to give the native peoples freedom to develop their unique identity in Christ so that the spread of the gospel is not hindered? There are no easy answers to these questions. The Bride of Christ has always wrestled with these issues, and until Christ returns, she always will.

The most significant example of this in the early church occurred when some Jewish Christians from Judea began to teach that circumcision was necessary for salvation and church membership. In their minds, this was a non-negotiable practice that defined them as God’s people. “If a new Gentile believer accepts Christ, why shouldn’t he be willing to be circumcised?” they thought. The influence of these Judaizers was so strong that even the Apostle Peter began to waver, until Paul personally rebuked him on this matter (Gal 2:14). The battle over circumcision reached a climax in Acts chapter 15, when Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem to present their views to the Jewish believers. At this so-called Jerusalem Council, Peter played the pivotal role; he strongly urged the church to accept Gentiles as full members on the merits of their faith in Christ alone.

Most people are simply unaware of how deeply they have been shaped by their own cultural upbringing, by their own national and ethnic identity. This is why the missionary calling is a special gift. A missionary needs an unusual kind of discernment and willingness to sacrifice many values (even good ones) that he holds dear. Even the twelve apostles who were personally trained by Jesus had great difficulty with this. It was hard for them not to impose additional requirements on new believers from other cultures to make them resemble their own culturally influenced notions of spiritual maturity and piety. Therefore, it is perfectly understandable and natural to expect similar difficulties to be going on in our midst today.

In the middle of the talk, he presented statistics reported by a New York missionary in 2005. At the beginning of the fall semester, 300 students were contacted to see if they would be interested in Bible study. Three students (1.0%) actually came to a Bible study, and one student (0.3%) eventually participated in discipleship training.

Statistics don’t lie, but they can be interpreted in many different ways. Here are two opposing narratives that can be built around that figure of 0.3 percent.

Narrative #1: God rewards discipline, hard work, and dedication. This missionary had to work incredibly hard to raise one disciple. We should work as hard as he did, or even harder, so that God will bless us and so that we too can raise disciples of Jesus.

Narrative #2: Fishing – the practice of contacting complete strangers and inviting them to Bible study – is a difficult way to make disciples in our current environment. Although it may have worked well in other times and places, God is not blessing our fishing and one-to-one ministry right now. Instead of kicking against the goads, perhaps we should step back and prayerfully think about why so few students are responding to our invitation. What might it tell us about our methods? About the culture in which we live? About ourselves and the way we are perceived? About God and how he wants to use the church?

A few years ago, I would have simply accepted Narrative #1 and not allowed myself to consider anything else. But my understanding of Scripture and my personal experiences are now pressing me toward Narrative #2.

My mentors in UBF have always challenged me to put aside cultural presuppositions and preconceived ideas when I study the Bible. So I applied this principle and read through the New Testament to see what it says about church growth in the days of the apostles. I discovered three things.

1. The early church did not grow through intensive fishing, evangelistic outreach and membership drives. In the days immediately following Pentecost, Christians devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship (kononia), breaking of bread, and prayer. They cared for one another’s needs and opened their homes to one another. They were not aggressively trying to bring strangers into the group, but they did meet openly in public where people could see what they were doing. They formed a genuine, loving, welcoming, Christ-centered community. Then the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved (Ac 2:42-47).

2. The mandate for carrying the gospel to the world in Acts 1:8, which we often call “the world mission command,” is not a command but a promise. Jesus states that his disciples will be empowered by the Holy Spirit, and then they will become his witnesses. The only command that Jesus actually gives in that passage is to remain in Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit (Ac 1:4). The disciples obeyed this command by waiting, joining together constantly in prayer, and working together under the leadership of Peter to heal the relational wounds in their fellowship caused by Judas’ betrayal (Ac 1:12-26).

3. The apostle Paul never counseled an entire church to go out and work hard to evangelize the non-believing world. He did carry out his own personal calling to preach and to teach. He encouraged individuals in the church with similar callings to diligently carry them out. For example, he exhorted Timothy to preach the Word in season and out of season (2Ti 4:2). But in his writings and advice to whole churches, he counseled them to deeply understand and believe a gospel message of salvation through Christ alone (Galatians and Romans); to praise God, purify themselves of sin, solve moral and interpersonal problems, put aside divisions, practice unity, and be conformed to the character of Christ (Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Thessalonians); and so on. The big themes in Paul’s writings are holding fast to the gospel and faithfully being the Body of Christ. Increasing membership through intensive ministry-wide outreach is not found in the writings of Paul nor, to my knowledge, anywhere in the New Testament.

[Am I misreading and mischaracterizing the New Testament here? If so, please take this opportunity to show me where and how I am wrong. I have been wrong many times before. I am eager to hear counterarguments and will publicly correct myself if I am wrong.]

Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that evangelism, discipling, sending missionaries, etc. are unbiblical or unnecessary. I believe they are essential and should be carried out in a wise, biblically defensible and culturally appropriate manner by those who have been truly called by God to do them. But Scriptures do not show the early church engaging in intensive, regular fishing to increase their numbers.

Despite this lack of regular fishing, the early church exhibited steady and dramatic growth. Sociologist and historian Rodney Stark (The Rise of Christianity) estimates that Christianity grew by about 40% in each decade during the first three centuries after Christ.

If the early did not aggressively pursue nonbelievers to bring them into the fold, then how did the number of disciples grow?

I believe it was not brought about by human efforts to grow the numbers. Rather, growth in numbers was a byproduct of the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit within the church.

On the day of Pentecost, the crowd’s willingness to listen to Peter was a direct response to their observation of the Spirit’s activity (Ac 2:14-21). In the days after Pentecost, the presence of the Holy Spirit in the church was evident in wonders and signs that went far beyond the apostles’ own works and efforts (Ac 2:43).

After 3,000 converts were baptized on Pentecost (Ac 2:41), statistics on numbers of disciples are scarce. Health and vitality in the church seems to be measured not by the numbers of new members, by but by the quality of believers’ character and the inward fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23).

Now some of you may object to what I am saying. Here is one possible counterargument: “The fact that fishing was fruitful in earlier days of UBF proves that it is a God-approved method. If we redouble our efforts and vigorously go fishing with absolute faith, then God will bless us once again as he did in the past.”

Perhaps so. But doesn’t that argument put the cart before the horse? In my opinion, it was not fishing (nor any other method) that caused the Holy Spirit to bless UBF and produce fruit in our ministry. Rather, fishing and other activities that took place were a response to the work of the Holy Spirit that was already going on. If today’s UBF members are not fishing, some would call them disobedient and lazy. But perhaps they are simply uninspired. Inspiration (in-Spir[it]-ation) is what the Holy Spirit does.

The Spirit works in different ways at different times. Incorrect notions about him may arise when Christians experience the powerful work of the Spirit in a particular time and place (as in a revival) and then assume that it is normative; they begin to think that this is what the Spirit’s work should look like in other places and times. This is why we need to carefully compare our own experiences with what the Bible says.

This reminds me of a great little video called The Big Red Tractor and the Little Village which is narrated by Christian author and pastor Francis Chan. If you haven’t seen this video yet, I would encourage you to watch it now.

Contacting 300 students to find one disciple seems analogous to what the townspeople were doing when they pushed and pulled the tractor through the field. Perhaps such Herculean efforts are inspired by the Holy Spirit. But from a distance, doesn’t it look like an attempt to do by our own strength, diligence and hard work the things that the Holy Spirit ought to be doing?

At his point in my life, I simply cannot engage in an intensive fishing and discipleship ministry. Working full time, taking care of my family (including two special-needs children) and pastoring a church was already more than I could handle. Through a painful process of acknowledging my failures and limitations, I have been forced to make significant changes to my lifestyle to improve my physical, mental and emotional health. I discovered that I need more time for personal reading, contemplation, and writing. I need to focus on building healthy, loving relationships with my wife, my children, and members of my church and community. I need to spend quality time with God and people whom he has already placed in my life. Intensive fishing at this stage of my life would be unnatural and cause me to burn out. Unlike my wife, I have never been good at it and have always disliked it. For me, it would be sheer drudgery and pain. In fact, I think it would actually be disobedient, because I would be neglecting the personal gifts, talents, opportunities and vision that God has given me and forcing myself to wear clothing that doesn’t fit.

Moreover, at this moment, I cannot in good conscience tell the people in my church that they are required to do it either. Most of the members of Penn State UBF are no longer students. While engaging in busy lives of full-time work, taking care of young children, etc. they are also serving our church in many valuable ways. For example, tomorrow (Saturday) morning they will be gathering at our church building to rake leaves, make building repairs, and so on. They tithe. They practice and perform praise music. They teach the Bible to our children and teenagers. They come to our weekly leaders’ meeting on Thursday night. They maintain good relationships with their neighbors and serve the State College community by participating in service projects and organizations. They are truly good people. I want to love and respect all of them just as they are and give thanks to God for what they are already doing. If they are going to do more, I want them to be motivated by love and personal faith, and not by guilt, relationship pressures, or my own ambitions or expectations. Pushing them to engage in vigorous programs of evangelism and discipleship – especially when I myself cannot do it now — would offend them, and rightly so, because at this stage in their lives God may indeed be calling them to serve him in other ways.

But if members of a church do not want to get back into the trenches and “fight the one-to-one battle,” then aren’t we going to become extinct? If we don’t go fishing, then how could our church ever grow?

Perhaps we can adopt some of the strategies of the early church.

Here are just a few ideas. Perhaps we can focus on building our relationships with God, so that we deeply experience his presence and gain new understanding of how to walk in step with the Holy Spirit rather than supplant him. Perhaps we can build better relationships with one another so that we become a Christ-centered community of love, so that fewer people will leave our ministry, and so that when newcomers stop by they will be strongly attracted by the presence of Christ. Perhaps we can take a long, hard look at the sociocultural and spiritual climate within our church that tends to turn away a very large portion (some 99.7 percent?) of the people we contact, and then make intentional, prayerful, and biblically sound changes that will not drive them away.

And as our current members grow in their love for Christ, perhaps they will see new opportunities to bring Christ into their existing non-church relationships and social networks.

According to Rodney Stark, the early Christians did not create their own institutions, but joined and transformed existing ones: “Social networks grow much faster when they spread through preexisting networks” (The Rise of Christianity, p. 55).

A vivid description of how the early Christians lived is found in an ancient letter (Letter to Diognetus) written about the 2^nd century. It says:

Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life… With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in… And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through… Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country… They live in the flesh, but they are not governed by the desires of the flesh. They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven.

For the last three decades, UBF in America has remained a distinct subculture. Our idiosyncrasies, our UBFishness, is displayed powerfully to the world in how we look, speak, and act. In our methods of evangelizing and raising disciples, we have been attempting to draw young Americans out of their natural (often Christian) habitats and into our own idiosyncratic subculture. Our second gens know how to navigate that subculture, but most American students do not; it makes them uncomfortable.

Instead of assuming that it’s okay to sift through massive numbers of students to find the 0.3 percent that can remain among us, perhaps it’s time to stop, reflect upon ourselves, and consider how to reach at least some portion of the other 99.7 percent.

Or we can stay the present course. We can joyfully thank God for our 0.3 percent, train them to do exactly as we do, and send them out fishing to find that next 0.3 percent.

But putting on my statistician’s hat, I need to tell you this. If we stay the present course, the prognosis is not good. I fear that the present course is a road to extinction, because 0.3 percent is not enough.

We worked hard in serving students with a vision to build a fruitful house-church ministry that would please God. After doing this for about eight years, the ministry grew to the point where we had five couples faithfully attending the worship service, along with a few American and international students.

But rather than taking pride in outward success, the Lord wanted to purify and sanctify our hearts.

In the summer of 2008, a serious disagreement arose among us regarding the direction of our ministry. Since we had come to America with a clear calling for campus ministry, we had naturally encouraged our house church members to evangelize and disciple students on campus. They themselves had been students, and they had been helped and blessed through campus ministry. But once they established familes and bore children, their hearts turned to their families and children, and they frequently complained about our emphasis and dedication to student ministry.

This criticism was difficult to bear. But God eventually helped us to realize, and to deeply repent, that we had been burdening our house church members and seeking to use them to bolster our own vanity and sinful ambitions. So we sent out an email to everyone, expressing our sincere apology and repentance, and announced the closing of our house church. We blessed everyone and urged them to find churches that would fit their individual callings and preferences.

Through this painful event, I came to experience God who sees everything. He saw that we had been serving our ministry with deeply hidden greed and selfish ambition. In due time, he had to cleanse us through fiery trial and tribulation.

Then a funny thing happened. As the summer of 2008 came to an end, several students returned from summer break and asked, “When are you going to have worship services again?”

We accepted this as God’s leading and reopened our house church. Before long, all the seats in our house were occupied with students who sincerely desired to grow and were actually growing as disciples of Christ. When we offered our Isaac to God, he graciously gave Isaac back. We experienced God’s unfailing grace and power. Despite all of our failures, he carried out his redemptive work and disciple-making ministry on his own.

Ever since that happened, we have resolved to accept and help anyone whom God sends to us, without worrying about whether or not they will eventually stay with us and help us to build our ministry. And the flood of American students continues. This past spring semester, in the midst of my busy schedule as a full-time professor, I was having 15 one-to-one Bible studies each week. Even during the summer break, I was still seeing about 10 Bible students each week. My wife Sarah cooks every day to host students in our home. By their own initiative, these students have been bringing their friends to our dinner table and eventually to one-to-one Bible study.

This past semester, six young men were taking turns delivering messages at our Sunday worship services. I had almost no chance to deliver a message myself.

Once we laid down our vain conceits and sinful ambitions to build our own ministry, we found ourselves becoming very busy, very joyful, quite fruitful and very free in God’s vast and abundant vineyard.

Through these experiences, we have also come to realize what it truly means to become “servants of God.” A few years ago, Dr. Robert Coleman, the author of The Master Plan of Evangelism, spoke at a UBF national staff conference. During his speech, he said, “Once you are known as a servant, you will never lack people to disciple.” When we were seeking only to increase the size of our ministry, we were not acting as servants. When we were causing the hearts of our coworkers to be burdened by our repeated emphasis on student ministry, we were not acting as servants. No wonder we didn’t have many people to serve back then! Who would want to come and learn from conceited people, with pride and ambition hidden deep in their souls?

The trial we experienced in the summer of 2008 was painful and humiliating. But now we look back on it and see that it was the most beautiful thing that could have happened to our lives. God allowed this to happen in order to purge from our hearts, once and for all, the hidden motives that were hindering us from becoming true servants and shepherds of his flock. We pray that God will continue to purify our souls and make us humble servants, suitable to take part in his redemptive work at UW-Eau Claire.

If God invests hundreds of pages in holy writ to deal with the sin of idolatry, I ought to start with the working hypothesis that I, too, could be guilty of that sin. There must be something in the fallen, sinful nature that inescapably seeks the worship, adoration, and longing after something that is not our Father God in heaven. As John Calvin pointed out, our hearts seem to be idol factories.

When I thought of idols, idolatry and idolaters, the images that came to mind were ancient pagan peoples who fell down before ugly statues, in some cases even offering up their own children. That didn’t seem relevant to me. But idols appear in many different forms. Jesus taught that money can be a very powerful idol. Teenie-bands and pop stars (as the name ‘American Idol’ suggests) have been worshiped. What about relationships? My spouse can be an idol. And then there is power and career and children and… Soon I realized that everything and everyone can be an idol. Therefore, only a very broad definition can do justice to the term “idol..” I like Tim Keller’s definition. In his book “Counterfeit Gods,” Keller defines an idol as follows: “It is anything more important to you than God… anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”

Idolatry is a very slippery slope, for this reason: Good things can be idols. Money and relationships are not bad at all. In fact, they are God’s blessings. And yet they can be devastating idols if I pursue and love them more than God. Any good thing can become an idol if I turn it into an ultimate thing.

Scarily, mission is not an exception. (For more on mission see here.) What is the ultimate goal of our lives? Is it God’s mission, or is it God himself? The distinction between the two might seem unimportant at first. But the consequences and entailments of making the wrong choice can be devastating. So I had to face this question: Is it possible that my mission, my house-church, my ministry could be an idol, just as money and sex are idols of nonbelievers? If so, what are the symptoms of worshipping mission as an idol?

Examining my own heart, I came up with these painful observations:

My joy was strongly dependent on the number of Bible students that I was able to bring to worship service.

My self-esteem and self-worth increased with every person who agreed to come to Bible study and decreased with every person who left.

I overloaded and burdened my Bible students with unrealistic expectations and humongous anticipation (such as becoming a world-class Bible teacher), which I justified by saying that I was only trying to look at these people with ‘the hope of God.’

I was not able to enjoy my Bible students for the people they are because I couldn’t be satisfied with their present stage in their discipleship (by which I meant their contributions to the ministry).

When people in whom I had invested years of prayer, labor, time and money left the ministry, I not only turned sad but became hopelessly crushed and inconsolably miserable.

After people had left, I continued to love them and to go after them because I silently hoped that they would come back to ‘my’ church. But when I realized that this was not going to happen, I gave up my relationships with them entirely.

I was willing to love my Bible students unconditionally (as long as they were around the ministry), but I was not willing to show the same kind of love to close coworkers.

I maintained little interest in others who were committed to Jesus outside of ‘my’ ministry, that is, UBF.

Serving my Bible students had led myself to neglect entirely the needs of my family and even my own needs.

I was a notorious breaker of the Sabbath rest.

At times, I was close to becoming burned out.

All of these are my personal experiences. Do any of the points above sound familiar to you? I am well aware that mission itself is good and necessary. Jesus commanded me to feed his sheep. Serving God’s mission is obedience to will. And yet, by making mission the ultimate pursuit of my existence, I was living a life of idolatry. I realized that it would, in the end, ruin my relationships with my family and my Bible students. It would turn me into a control freak. And in the end it would leave me utterly despaired, disappointed and dissatisfied. And a church that is filled with that kind of idolatry could not but end up becoming unhealthy and even abusive.

What is the solution to this dilemma? Idolatry is the worship of anything that isn’t God in an attempt to receive what only God can give. What are the things I long for and which only God can give? I seek significance. I want to live a life that truly makes a difference. I want to have purpose. I want to have a sense of security and safety. I want to be affirmed, valued and cherished. I long for the one relationship that will satisfy the hungers of my heart and the thirsts of my soul. Ultimately, I seek lavish, satisfying, overflowing love.

It would be a most foolish thing to assume that the mission I am called to serve could fulfill any of these needs. There is only one place in this universe where all of these needs are supplied. It is the place where God is worshiped and adored, through the death and life of His incarnated Son Jesus Christ, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. The good news of the gospel is that God loves me. He made me ultimately worthy and valuable by purchasing me with the infinitely costly blood of Christ. The purpose of my life is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, and that enjoyment must begin here on earth. Unless my mission is the consequence of worship, then I have turned something good into something evil and I have done good things for wrong motives.

In one of our most studied and beloved Bible passages, Jesus stands on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, reinstating a broken, despondent, failed disciple. Not by challenging him to never deny his master again. Not by telling him to first feed more sheep. But by affirming his eternal love to Peter by asking him three times: “Do you love ME? Do you truly love ME?”

Who were the Diaspora Jews? Diaspora is “to migrate or scatter.” These Jews were exiled and forced to live outside of Israel. The Diaspora occurred in 722 BC, when the Assyrians conquered Northern Israel, and in 588 BC when the Babylonians conquered Judah. They were also called Hellenistic Jews, because they lived in Greek speaking territories. Living outside of Israel, they eventually lost the Hebrew language, and by the 1st century mainly spoke Greek. The Hebrew speaking Jews despised the Diaspora Jews, because they didn’t speak or write in Hebrew, “God’s language.” Indeed, they became culturally and religiously marginalized.

It was not by accident. God raised up this “marginalized” group of Jews as his instrument to bring the gospel to the Gentile world. Stephen, Paul of Tarsus, Barnabas, Timothy were all Hellenized Jews. God used them as a bridge to bring the gospel out of rigid Jerusalem, to the Greek speaking Gentiles, and eventually to the ends of the earth.

The missionary children in UBF (and any missionary children) have some similarities to the Diaspora Jews. They are multicultural. They may feel marginalized. They may feel ethnically confused, seeking a real identity. They may have felt discriminated against from time to time. God can use them greatly as his cross cultural witnesses. They understand the rigors of their parent’s sacrificial lives in Christ. They easily come to understand the culture and language of the where they are living. What effective communicators of the gospel they can be! How fearless they can be to bring God’s word and the gospel of Jesus to people of different cultures and languages!

Yesterday I witnessed a joyful wedding between two missionary children. One was raised in the USA, the other in Korea and Argentina. I was so moved that one of their prayer topics as a couple is to go out as missionaries. There is a beautiful Filipino American family. They started raising their children in Chicago, then went out as missionaries to the Ukraine seven years ago. Now two of their daughters are going to school in Turkey and fearlessly and effectively support the UBF gospel ministry there. My son-in-law is a multicultural son of missionaries. He, without hesitation and without fear, is willing to go out to wherever God leads his growing family to advance the gospel.

I stand amazed at God and his ways of working. Praise God that He works through any group of persons who become uniquely useful to him. As he used the Diaspora Jews as a bridge to the Gentile world, may God use multicultural children of missionaries to bridge and advance the gospel of Jesus Christ to peoples of every nation.

“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.” The kingdom strikes back. The season of God has come! By choice, humans joined the enemy’s camp. At first, it seemed as though the enemy was winning. But God had a plan to take back the world from the enemy. The author of Mark’s gospel saw God’s redemptive story unfolding before his very eyes. Through his death and resurrection, Jesus destroyed the power of sin and death and restored God’s rule.

The kingdom of God is at hand. But it is not quite here yet. Until God completes this restoration of his kingdom, we have an errand to run.

The gospel of Jesus Christ brings a new global perspective to God’s work in the world. Jesus could not have evangelized the entire world by himself. As the Father had sent him, he was now sending the disciples. “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” (Matt 28:19). The word translated as disciple stems from the Greek word mathetis. That word, mathetis, is derived from tthe word mathe with the inflection on tis. Mathe means to learn. (We have the English word mathematics which is believed to have come from mathe.) Thus disciple means learner. The gospel writers had this nuance in mind when they used the term mathetis in their writings. The NIV translators applied their best judgment from the context and inserted a preposition “therefore” at the beginning of Matthew 28: 19. The literal translation goes something like this: “As you are going make disciples…”

John 20:21 is John’s version of the Great Commission. John used the Greek word apostello which means “send.” This second meaning of apostle applies to all believers. In the same way that God sent Jesus into the world, Jesus was sending his disciples and us into the world to make disciples of all nations. Some of us think that we think that we can be a high school teacher or computer programmer or medical doctor and be a disciple at the same time, and that we need to balance our commitments between these two callings. But the truth of the matter is that we are all disciples from first to last. The very purpose of our lives is to learn from Jesus and grow in his image, becoming like him in his perfect humanity. We emulate the beauty of Jesus in real life, so that this world becomes a better place because of us. Discipleship is a gift and a privilege and what we do in every aspect and corner of life.

In the book of Acts, the gospel ministry gained momentum and spread like wildfire, crossing the boundary into Gentile territory. Jewish believers did not know what to do with the Gentile believers. The Jewish Christians had a hard time accepting Gentile believers into their synagogue-like fellowship meetings. The issues were cultural. Peter and the other apostles sought to settle this matter in the light of the gospel. They convened the Jerusalem conference to hear out the case under the leadership of James, the brother of Jesus. After prayerful deliberation, they understood that both Gentiles and Jews believed the same Christ and received the same Spirit; there was no difference (Acts 15). This was the turning point in world mission. The apostle Paul was vindicated and found new impetus for his personal ministry among the Gentiles. The apostles served their generation and proclaimed the gospel to the ends of the known world.

In this two-part series, we have been discussing the topic, “How can we read the Bible through the lens of God’s mission?” We can read the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, as one single unit with the theme of God’s redemptive mission. The people involved in the Bible stories were were ordinary women and men. But God called them and worked through them to revealed his redemptive plan. Did God’s mission fail because his workers failed? As long as God lives, his world mission will not fail. The degree of godlessness in the world seems to be growing by leaps and bounds. I asked a number of students at Yale about their spirituality. By my assessment, the level of spirituality — the percentage of students deeply interested in spiritual matters — stands at about 10%. In 1724, when Jonathan Edwards was a tutor at Yale, that percentage was about 60%. Over the years, spirituality at Yale has sharply declined. Obviously, we have been failing to reach Yale students with the gospel. Yet God’s work is going strong and he will restore his rule at Yale.

Every company or organization today has a mission statement. Their mission statement reflects the company’s or organization’s goals and commitment to maximize their potential. God’s mission statement is to redeem our earth. UBF International is dedicated specifically to campus mission; our guiding principle to serve campus mission more effectively. But if we are aligned with God’s mission, we cannot limit ourselves to campus students. We should be ready to welcome anyone, and not exclude anyone who does not happen to be a student. We cannot exclude ministries who are not specifically engaged in campus mission. If we emphasize UBF’s unique mission to the exclusion of others, God’s mission will be tainted. Our mission is not the mission of any person or organization. Our mission, the true mission of the church, is God’s mission.

The ultimate purpose of God’s mission is to establish the worship of God. Look at the composition of worshipers described in Revelation 21. It includes all ethnic groups. In the New Jerusalem, there will be people who are yellow, red, black, chocolate, white and every other color. Our God is the God of the universe. He is the God of love and justice.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” speaks about two aspects of God’s character: love and justice. God loves to show off his love. At the same time, he is the God of justice. His rule on earth as it is in heaven was interrupted by human failure. The enemy’s deception and the fall of man were the catalysts for God’s world mission.

God’s mission is to restore his rule on earth. Very soon he will destroy Satan’s counterfeit kingdom and establish his own kingdom. Since the beginning of time, God has been moving forward with this world-mission task. We are called to to participate and accomplish God’s world mission purpose in our own generation.

Let’s briefly examine what God has been doing in biblical human history. At the exact time that humans failed, God chose to love humans. Think about this: God does not stop loving us every time we make a mistake. As human culture and civilization flourished, unbridled human behavior spread unabashed. Noah’s ark of judgment and salvation did not solve the human problem. Humans found a way to live on their own. They were smart, resourceful, and technologically innovative. When God confused their language at the Tower of Babel, it was not a punishment; it was to show his love for them.

Out of a chaotic world, God called one man, Abraham to bless him to be a great nation and a blessing to others (Genesis 12:1-3). Here God’s salvation story took a different turn. Through this one man and his descendants, God had a plan to bless the whole world.

Through Abraham’s descendants, God’s world-mission purpose was being worked out in Egypt. A serious question arises: “Why would God allow his people to suffer slavery in Egypt?” Firstly, God was building a nation of people who would bear his name among the nations. God’s people were well trained by the yoke of slavery. Secondly, and more importantly, God wanted to reveal his glory through stubborn Pharaoh. God was able to wipe out Pharaoh of Egypt, but God allowed Pharaoh to be stubborn for his own glory (Exodus 9:15ff).

Beyond the Exodus, the story of God’s chosen people continued to unfold. We owe our biblical history to the story of the chosen people, Israel. The position and status of these chosen people was such that another question arises: “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles too?”

God is the God of the universe. Before he was the God of Moses, he was the God of Abraham. Before he was the God of Abraham, he was the God of Adam. And before he was the God of Adam, he was the God of the universe. He is the God of all people of all nations. Thus, the idea that the Jews were inherently special, and that all people on earth would come to God only through them, is simply not biblical.

The temple in Jerusalem was not merely for Jews. Solomon’s temple was to bear the name of the Lord “so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you” (1 Kings 8:41). Later, when referring to the temple, Jesus said: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17). God’s mission extended beyond Jews to the Gentiles.

God was with people of other religions. It was unfortunate that his chosen people failed to accomplish his world mission purpose. As a father disciplines his son, God chastised his chosen people. The Babylonian captivity was God’s “left hand” in action. The Jews of the Diaspora became salt and light to the world. They proclaimed the name of God wherever they went, intentionally or otherwise. The book of Esther occupies a unique position in the middle of the Bible, even though it does not explicitly mention God’s name. This book gives us some idea of what God was doing with the people of other world religions. Esther, a Persian name, means “Star”; her Hebrew name was Hadassah, meaning “myrtle.” Should uncle Mordecai have counseled her to proclaim her Jewish identity and keep her Jewish name? For whatever reason, Mordecai told Esther to hide her Jewish identity, at least for a while. By doing so, Mordecai was immersing himself, contextualizing himself, into the local Persian culture for the sake of survival in this foreign land. But uncle Mordecai also knew how to stand up and pull the trigger when the call came. At the critical moment, he called on Esther and said, “And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14) Esther realized that God had a plan and vision for her life. She took a risk with her life and said, “If I perish, I perish,” in order to save her people from annihilation. The implication is that God sent Esther to the royal court of the Persian Empire because he loved Persians. As she went, she revealed the name of the God of Israel to the Gentiles so that they too would fear him.

The world and its dwellers are the focus of God’s mission. The justice of God demanded that all people of all nations be given an opportunity to hear the gospel.