Hey all! About a week ago I asked my dad if he would be willing to write a guest blog for me and he definitely delivered! God has blessed with an amazing dad and this blog is sure evidence of that. I am so proud of him and his heart. I am proud of the seemingly small steps he has taken that push him towards a dangerous life.
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A Dangerous Life
“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard; you will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues.” – Matthew 10:16-17, NIV
Several years ago, when I was early in my life as a newly reborn Christian, I had a desire to read and learn as much as I could about this life of the Christian. It was a life I thought I’d been living for as long as I could remember. I mean I went to church fairly regularly (Amy sort of forced me to), took my kids to Sunday school, I hadn’t committed any of the really bad sins. Right? No, not right. As I was just starting to figure out, the life of a Christian was much more than I ever realized.
One of the books I read early on in this journey to rediscover Christianity was Radical by David Platt. I recommend it highly. One of Platt’s primary messages is that a life devoted to following Christ is not one of comfort and safety. It is in fact the exact opposite of comfortable and safe. The verses from Matthew 10 above are Jesus’ message to the disciples as he sends them out to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven has come near. In addition to telling them that they would be sheep among wolves, He also told them not to take any money with them or extra clothes or even a staff. He told them they would be hated by everyone and that they would be persecuted. This is an interesting strategy Jesus had for sending out of missionaries. Take nothing with you and by the way, you’re going to get flogged, hated and persecuted. Not quite the Adventures in Missions marketing campaign. But the New Testament is littered with these sorts of warnings. Paul says that “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Timothy 3:12) Those words are pretty definitive. Everyone. Will be.
Platt says “The danger in our lives will always increase in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ”. This has stuck with me over the years. What would happen if we all lived a little more dangerously? What would happen when faced with a choice of various alternatives we picked the riskiest option? What if when we felt that prompting to go, we just went? If we didn’t say “let me pray about it” as an excuse for inaction? If we didn’t form a committee to explore the viability of it and then fundraise for three years and then maybe go? If we’re still feeling called, that is.
I think often God wants us to choose the dangerous options in our lives. Because through those dangerous options, He is glorified. When we do something that looks crazy and foolish to the world, then it will be obvious that it was God at work when it bears fruit. I am always amazed and humbled when I meet people who live their lives in this way. Kenny Sacht is one of those people. Or Coach, if you prefer. Coach was, yes you guessed it, a coach at a Christian high school in Boise, Idaho. That doesn’t sound very dangerous. One year, Coach got the prompting that he was supposed to take his basketball players on a mission trip. Well sure, that seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for a Christian high school team to do. Maybe they could go build a school building in Central America or a water project in Africa. Sure, they could have done those things and they would have been great and impactful experiences I’m sure. But Coach Kenny felt strongly that he was supposed to take his basketball players to the Philippines to find the sex trade. Ummm…what? Yes. Coach Kenny took his high school players to the Philippines to find girls trapped in the sex trade. And then he went back with a team of volleyball players. Did he know what exactly he was going to find on that first trip? No. Was he an expert in human trafficking? Nope. He just went. And somehow through his passion and conviction, he convinced his players, their parents, and his school administration to let him do it. He made the dangerous choice.
Well now Coach Kenny is no longer a coach. He is the founder of Wipe Every Tear. And he spends all of his time and energy (and he has a lot of energy!) rescuing precious and innocent women that are being exploited in the bars in the Philippines. He offers them an escape from the life in which they are trapped. He offers them a safe home, food, and a college education. In other words, he offers them hope. We had the distinct honor of working alongside Coach and his WET team during our Parent Vision Trip to the Philippines. When we signed up for the PVT, we had some sense that the ministry we would be working with was focused on sex trafficking. The term “bar ministry” was thrown around as early as the launch weekend event in September. But honestly, I hadn’t really given that much thought. The important thing was we were going to go see our little girl that we hadn’t seen in 7 months. The ministry work, well that’s just a cherry on top of that Emma sundae.
As the date got closer it became more clear that the term “bar ministry” meant actually going into the bars these girls had been trafficked into and talking to them about getting out. Now I don’t know about you, but when I hear the word “trafficking”, I get some rather distinct images. In the movies anyone involved in any sort of trafficking usually has really scary dudes standing on either side of his desk with really big guns strapped to their sides. My impression was that these people don’t like their cash flow being messed with. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen multiple movies whose entire premise is based on some trafficker exacting revenge on some poor schmuck that disrupts his business. Traffickers, as far as this accountant from Iowa was concerned, are not people to be trifled with. This little mission trip was starting to register pretty high on the danger-meter. So it must be a God thing. So I took comfort in the words of the great Elwood Blues, “They won’t catch us. We’re on a mission from God.”
And into the bars we went. Our PVT group broke up into groups of 8-10 people and canvassed Angeles City’s Walking Street, home of 200 bars and 15,000 trafficked girls. Our group that first night was Emma, Amy and I, one of Emma’s fellow racers and her mom, a couple from Australia that was working with WET and two Filipina girls in the WET program (former bar girls, now college students!). This is the group that’s going to storm the bars? The most imposing figures in this group being me and Aussie Jeremy? This does not look like a group ready to take on a trafficker. Later I would figure out that the two four foot-something Filipina girls were far and away the most formidable of our group. But as we stand in the middle of Walking Street debating which bar to infiltrate first, I feel like we are woefully undermanned.
There are no windows in these bars. And the doors are covered in black curtains. From the outside, you truly cannot see what you are walking into. Our Filipinas made the leadership decision on which bar would be our first victim and we passed through the black curtain. As we enter that first bar, I am struck first by how small it is. The next thing that is striking are the girls. It is clear that they did not want to be there. They look scared, bored, and anxious. There was one other small group of customers in the bar, so we had no problem finding a place to sit. I am an auditor by trade. That means my job is to assess risk and then figure out how to mitigate that risk to an acceptably low level. So of course, my plan is to sit back for a while and take the whole scene in and then figure out the best plan to proceed. Step 1; order a couple of Coke Lights. That seems safe enough. So while I’m surveying the scene and developing contingency plans for when the bad dudes with the big guns come storming out of the back room, I sort of lose track of what the rest of the group is doing. As my Coke Light is being delivered to my table, I look up and see Emma and the other racer in our group standing at the stage talking to one of the girls. And then they are sitting with her and talking to her. I see them hug her. They are laughing and smiling.
While I was playing it cautious, my daughter and her friend just went. They just loved. They didn’t wait for their Coke Lights. They didn’t wait to develop a plan. They saw someone in need of love and hope and they sprang into action. They made the dangerous choice. As that first night unfolded, the boldness of the racers was evident. We saw them on stage dancing with the girls (as well as some parents). We saw them laughing and loving. We saw them engaging with the girls as well as the male customers of the bar. We saw them completely turn Walking Street upside down. They shined light into the darkness. By Tuesday night, the Wipe Every Tear and World Race presence was clearly felt on Walking Street. Shane and Andrew sat at the entrance to the street and sang Jesus music for three hours while the troops brought hope to bar after bar and girl after girl.
On Wednesday morning, 22 Filipina bar girls made a dangerous choice of their own. They chose to believe what these crazy white Jesus loving people had told them in the bars. They chose to not believe the lies that the mamasans and bar managers told them. Lies that we were the bad guys that would traffic them, rape them and kill them. They chose to get on a bus that led them to a new life and a way out. They chose freedom.
As I reflect on this experience, it has reinforced the seed planted by David Platt years ago. We are not called to a life of safety and caution. We follow a dangerous Savior. He promised to turn our lives upside down. And He’s proven He’ll do it too. Just ask Coach Kenny. Just ask a racer. Ask Emma. She made the dangerous choice a year ago to defer her education to go on the World Race. And now she’s making the dangerous choice to go to school at a place where she’s never stepped foot on campus, in a city and state she’s never been to. I pray that these 9 months on the World Race have instilled in her a spirit of danger and adventure that she will carry with her the rest of her life. As for me, the risk assessing auditor still has trouble making the dangerous decisions. I still want to know what will happen. Or at least what could happen. I’m still a work in progress. We all are.
Live dangerously my friends.
God bless,
Dan Koestner
