This week has truly been a whirlwind week!
This past weekend, the India team and I drove about 10 hours to Orlando where we attended a Church Planting Conference called Advance Initiative. This blog is to give you a better idea of what we learned at the conference, but I also just want to express how much I have come to LOVE my team! These people. They love the Lord. They are patient, they are humble, they each lead well and work so so hard. On the way down, I caught myself realizing just how much fun I was having simply by being in their company, singing to the music we all commonly enjoy and talking about life and what God had been revealing to us this season. Needless to say, I am beyond blessed to have them in my life and to be launching with them to India in January where we will spend the next season together. I know that this spirit led cohesiveness is in part a result of YOUR prayers and desire to see my team be a family, so from the bottom of my heart..THANK YOU for praying, fasting and interceding on our behalf. Out team is 5 people strong, as we just had another guy join a few days ago so be on the lookout for another blog soon on them, who they are and what God has shown me about their giftings and strengths!
Now, back to the conference…. about 95% of everyone in attendance at the conference were second generation Indian-Americans (they were born in America but their parents immigrated here from India). All of these beautiful people came from all over the US, Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, D.C, etc….and they came together to share and learn from one another as they share a similar vision to plant multiethnic churches here in America. You might be thinking…”Wait…you’re a Caucasian America planting churches in India…that’s the opposite of what you’re doing so why did you go?” GREAT QUESTION! At first, I was confused as well haha but throughout the weekend I realized why God had called us to this conference. By seeing the opposite approach to our church planting vision, we were able to grow in a way that took us wayyy outside our box of expectations!
While in one of the break out sessions on Cultural Integration, we were presented with a statistic that absolutely blew my mind…only 2.7% of churches in America are actually mutliethnic (with the lose definition being that the majority nationality is 80% or less). Can you believe that only 2.7% of churches in America have more than 20% members other than the majority in that congregation? I know I had a hard time with it! Martin Luther King once said “it is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning”. The sad thing is that, this is still true today! And this is NOT would God wants for our church to look like. Our flesh desires to stay comfortable, associating with people of our own culture but God’s plan was to disperse the people all throughout the world and have them multiply throughout the land (hence why he destroyed the tower of babel).
These second generation Indians that we had the privilege of meeting this weekend, believe that God has called them as a people group here in America to start a revolution in diverse church planting movements throughout the United States. They have a very unique place in America where they are able to bridge the divides between White and Black, Rich and Poor, Cast Out and Elite….God has given them the ability to mend relationships in the US, not towards politics or the economy or wealthy but towards the Lord. By seeing this passion that they have grasped onto and acted on by actually starting these churches, I was able to see how we have a similar position in India.
As a team of 5 Americans, moving to south India….it would be easy to think “Wow. they must be super spiritual or have some crazy measure of scriptural intelligence to be doing this.” But in reality, we are TRULY nothing special. We aren’t perfect people, we don’t know the language well, we aren’t doctors or lawyers or engineers (well, brant is but the rest of us aren’t haha)…one of my teammates, Sabrina, hasn’t even been to India! (this girl…shes amazing, ill talk about her next blog) However, we ALL LOVE PEOPLE. We aren’t going because we are strong and mighty and going to save the world…but we are going because we recognize our weakness and know that God’s strength operates in that weakness (2 Cor. 12:10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.) The key to seeing radical growth in God’s kingdom is to be willing to be used by God, act out of a response of being led by the Lord and rely on the fact that he will equip you for the calling he has placed before you. As I was praying about this and realizing the importance of simply saying “Yes” knowing that the task ahead can only be done if God intervenes, I saw that as Americans we also have a unique place in India…we (like Indians in America) can help mend relationships between separate cultures and states of India. Maybe, just maybe, if we remove ourselves and our own agenda from the mission ahead, God will give us the ability to build relationships with our neighbors, and see hatred turn to RADICAL Love!
If you resonate with this at all, I would encourage you to take a look at Moses’ response to God calling him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt in Exodus chapters 3 & 4. He was resistant, he didn’t see himself as a leader, he did not want to go and even asked God to send someone else. Did God really NEED Moses? Heck No! but he WANTED to bless him with this task because he knew what the end result would be. God knows and has told us what the end result of our time in India and your time witnessing to your coworkers/family in America or wherever else you are will be..Revelation says that EVERY nation and tongue will be represented in heaven…and because we have this promise we can stand on it and have faith that people from these unreached people groups will one day have a relationship with the ONE TRUE GOD. If this is God’s promise…what is your role in this? Where does God have you Monday through Friday? Where does he have you on the weekends? Who around you is unaware that they are valued, loved and known by God? and more importantly, what is God asking you to do in your weakness so that his strength can show up and move mountains in the hearts of others?
