About 20 minutes away from our hotel in the heart of Da Lat sits a church at the top of a hill. There a white cross is at the top of the steeple with words written below it that read; TIN LANH which translates in Vietnamese Good News. This Church is possibly the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen. It’s huge, intricately designed, with beautiful features. Beautifully carved wooden doors, floor to ceiling length windows mahogany wooden church pews, and crystal glass chandeliers hanging from every A frame point of the ceiling.
The word says; The Lord spoke and said “I will build my church and the gates of Hell will NOT prevail. It gives my heart pure joy to know we’re in a closed country where we can’t speak the name of Jesus, yet we sat among two hundred plus believers in one of the most beautiful sanctuaries I’ve ever stepped foot in. Satan himself can not stop what is being done in Vietnam. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess he is Lord. It’s scary to think that right outside these beautiful church walls people are walking up and down the streets and have never HEARD the name of Jesus. People are sitting in their homes worshiping man made statues and idols. Meanwhile I sit surrounded by people of this country singing our God praises, and starving for more of Him. It is so encouraging yet so disheartening. Sitting there I wondered how did all these people come to know the Lord in a closed country? Where did it start?
Every Nation and every tongue takes on a whole new meaning on the World Race. Sitting in a Christian Church listening to the beat of worship and praise by local Vietnamese people is beautiful. I cant speak or understand their language but I recognized the melody and quickly joined in singing. Although we are not singing the same language we are praising the same God. It baffles me we can’t talk about our faith yet I see so many around me acknowledging the God I believe in. I realized in that moment, God doesn’t need me to change the world. He’ll do that. But he is allowing me to help him, if I’m willing. People came before me planting seeds, and told these people about Jesus, and people will come after me to water the seeds that have already been planted.
But what do I do and how?
This question has been on my heart since before we arrived in Vietnam. They told us before hand we are not to speak about Jesus, our faith, or why we’re here. We are to use code words, and tell locals we are tourist traveling the world doing humanitarian work. So how then do we teach people about Jesus? We cant even say his name!
I’ve been feeling convicted lately about our ministry. In the past four months our ministry has consisted of some basic relational ministry but mainly hard physical labor. We’ve unloaded and moved truckloads of dirt, we built a wall, a church, and dug a mile and a half long trench. We have started early, worked late, sweated, got sunburned, and acquired callouses. But to me that was ministry. Ministry was helping accomplish a task, from beginning to finish. When a task was completed ministry was completed and we could move on to the next task. This is how I viewed ministry, until now…
God has been revealing to me ministry is not a task. Its not a series of start to finish operations.
If I am being honest I was not thrilled about ministry this month. We weren’t given a schedule, or a list of things to accomplish. We decided as a team to make a box of ministry ideas. We cut up tabs of paper and wrote down different ministry ideas on them. We decided each day we would draw a tab of paper and do whatever was on the paper.
What I’ve realized in these past few weeks is Ministry doesn’t always look the same, and it’s certainly not always physical labor. Ministry is smiling at a passing neighbor, it’s trying to speak the language when you walk into a local store, ministry is taking a flower to our favorite noodle lady, it’s passing out words of encouragement to locals on the street, ministry is hugging our Buddhist hotel owner on the way out the door, (she doesn’t speak English, but she smiles when I hug her) ministry is buying our contact a cup of coffee, or taking a fellow teammate to lunch, it’s praying for people on your squad or your friends and family back home, ministry is with BEING with each other and pursuing each other, it isn’t WHAT your doing, it’s who you’re being, and who you’re reflecting. It’s reflecting Jesus, and if we’re doing that we’re always doing ministry.
My prayer for myself, my team, and for you is that we would start seeing the ministry side to everything, seeing Gods hand in all things. I pray we would see the person right in front of us, and all around us, and just do life with them. Smile at them, hug them, buy them coffee, just sit with them and try to figure out the best way to look like Jesus to them. This month we can’t speak the name Jesus. But we can BE Jesus to everyone we meet. Jesus is a Universal language. We don’t need to preach to people to convey a message. We just need to love people where they are, for who they are. American, Vietnamese, black, white, Asian, young, old, gay, straight. John 13:35 “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Let us remember even when we can’t speak about Jesus, or don’t know how, we can Always BE like Jesus to everyone we meet. We may be the only Jesus some people ever encounter. What will people experience when they meet you? How will they see Jesus in you?
