In their early 20s, Janine and her husband Ian Maxwell founded what would become one of the most successful marketing companies in Canada. For 16 years, Onyx Marketing Group boasted some of the most well-known companies in North America as clients. On 9/11 Janine was in New York City for a business conference, and she quickly found herself a part of the masses fleeing the metro. This life-changing event sent Janine on a search for the meaning of life, which took her to Africa where she encountered the AIDS pandemic, poverty, and disease. She would never be the same.
Together Janine and Ian closed down Onyx and co-founded Heart For Africa, a faith-based organization focusing on Hunger, Orphans, Poverty and Education in Swaziland. Their focus is on bringing hope to the people of Africa in the areas of hunger, poverty, orphans and education. Their vision for self-sustainable food security for all people is at the core of community transformation. Ian and Janine successfully unite and partner people from many nations to work together for comprehensive and lasting solutions for the country of Swaziland.
All the guys of E-Squad were together for “Manistry month” and Ian and Janine were our contacts. We were there to help out at Heart For Africa in their farms, on construction projects, and in their orphanages.
More and more each month, God introduces a new contact to me to push along the work the previous one had done in my heart. The common theme among all of my contacts this year is they have truly given their entire lives to the Gospel. They love God with their entire heart, their entire soul, and their entire mind (Matthew 22:37 ESV). Their days are marked with a desperate love for God. Serving God is not a hobby or a secondary item, knowing and serving him is the cornerstone from which all activity flows. My contacts in Swaziland displayed this kind of followership during our time there in February.
Why are people like the Maxwell’s considered radical? I have thought about that a lot lately. Aren’t they just doing what God told them to do? Let’s redefine Christianity and shift our perspective. What if we started looking at missionaries like the Maxwell’s as ordinary Christians? Ordinary Christianity means being committed beyond what is accepted or what is going on in and around you. It is being committed beyond our feelings, hurts, past failures, or what may lie ahead. It is the commitment in the face of what others do or don’t do, those who are weak in faith, or hostile toward the Gospel of Christ. It’s holding fast to the core of the message as taught by Christ, revealed in the Bible, beyond any culture or sub-culture within Christianity.
Throughout this year I’ve thought of William Carey, the pioneer missionary to India. His life emanated Christ and he lived a life of courage and boldness. On September 30, 1785 William Carey spoke in a ministers meeting and strongly encouraged all in attendance to consider the innate responsibility they had to reach the whole world with the gospel. An older man in the congregation spoke up and told Carey, “Young man, sit down! Sit down! You are an enthusiast. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without consulting you and me.” Carey did not sit down and keep quiet. He spent 40+ years in India for the sake of the gospel. At the end of his life he described his ministry in this way,
“If one should think it worth his while to write my life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”
Radical gospel-centered Christianity appears in the ordinary plodding of daily life by loving God and loving your neighbor. Am I saying that you have to close your business or quit your job or sell everything you have? You tell me. Gospel-centered Christianity means obedience to a sovereign God who knows best. Radical Christianity is ordinary Christianity. Thanks to Ian and Janine, and the countless other missionaries this year that have shown authentic Christianity to me.
