What Marty McFly Taught Me About Ministry

This was Team Kindle’s second week in Mwanza, Tanzania, and
I have the stories and the pictures to prove it. I could tell you all about the incredible
beauty of this place and the purity in the children who live in this
neighborhood and the vastness of the Serengeti and the power of God and the
ways that He has shown up this week.  I
could tell you about the demons that my teammates saw cast out this week or all
of the people who have made decisions to follow Jesus with their lives.  They have seen and experienced some
incredible things and made some unbelievable strides for the Kingdom in the
last four or five days.

 

Not me.  I’ve been
busy watching Back to the Future.  All three of them.

 

I’ve spent what might have been the coolest week of the Race
so far sick.  Strangely sick.  The kind of sick where I cannot walk for very
long because I get nasty headaches and then I can feel every single step that I
take resonating through my skull.  And
the achey, feverish sort of sick that doesn’t let me sleep well at night.  The kind of sick where I’m more or less okay,
as long as I’m laying down and not doing much. 
That kind of sick.

 

I went to the doctor last Monday and he checked me for
malaria (clear on all accounts), tried to ascribe my headaches to the weekend’s
safari (they had started before that), and then he asked me how long I had been
traveling.  “Five months,â€� I told
him.  He smiled at me kindly.

 

“Ah,â€� he said.  “Well
then I think you are homesick.�

 

That much I could have told him before he took my blood.

To be honest, this week has been a big struggle for part of
me.  I’m lying in a tent, sweating and watching movies
and daydreaming about life in America and all of the things that I swear I
won’t take for granted anymore, like real coffee and French Vanilla cream and
microwaves and my own car and a house with more than three feet of personal
space.  And I could be lying somewhere
in America and watching movies and daydreaming about what comes next in my life
just as well as I’m doing it in Tanzania.

 

But another part of me is really grateful for this
time.  God has quite literally knocked me
on my back, but the truth is I’ve needed this week.  Five months on the World Race is a long time, but it’s still real life and
you still have hard, dry seasons.  He has
pulled me into this quiet, personal place with Himself that I needed more than
I realized.

I was reading in Hebrews the other day and I’m madly in love with it.  In Chapter 10, the writer says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.”  He who promised is faithful to use and grow His children, however He sees fit.  He who promised is faithful to grow perseverance and endurance in His children, even when they’re sick of their current circumstances.  And He who promised is faithful to give His children times of rest and healing when they need it most.

 

So all of this to say, I’ve felt gross for over a week
now.  And I’m not kidding… I really have
been devouring the Back to the Future
movies and I’m actually obsessed with them. 
And I haven’t seen the miracles here and I haven’t written any blogs in
a long time and I haven’t learned very much Swahili.  But I’ve also had some really rejuvenating
time in the Spirit and I feel more ready to take on the next six months than I have in a long time.  I guess Jesus just wanted me to Himself for a little bit and I kind of like that.  I’m ready to get out of my tent, though… because after all, we all know that Marty McFly gets more and more annoying as the movies progress.

*PS: My nerdalicious title is dedicated to my friend and
brother Peter “I hate nerdy prophesyâ€� Owens. 
I thought you’d like that one. 
Love you, kid ;-)*