Brother time why
do you escape us so?
Too short, too
short are the seconds of these sacred moments.
“Cant we just
stay a little bit longer, Daddy?” says the child of faith.
It’s only just
begun, this encounter with eternity…
And now You say
I must walk away and trust that it will continue on by the power of your
Spirit? …
Yes, I know I
can do that; I believe that You can succeed where we see only a wall of
impossibility…
Yet, I cant
ignore the voice that’s insisting on another way.
My faith knows
you can do all things, with or without me, but don’t You typically do the works
of Your kingdom via the servants You have called by faith?
“Therefore, go
and make disciples of all nations”, Jesus said in the Great Commission of
Matthew’s Gospel (28:19).
Can disciples be
made without a teacher, leader, or even a Bible to educate and guide them?
Battered by the
wind and scorched by the sun are those seedlings that have no roots.
Lost at sea is
the boat without a skipper; hopeless is its voyage against the unending
challenge of the current.
Who will tend to
your flocks of newborn sheep when we depart?
Its only just
begun, their journey into eternity…
“Won’t you hold
our hands as we take these beginning steps?” ask the eyes of these hungry
infants of faith.
Who will teach
them about Your perfect character, as Creator, Teacher, Law-Giver, Just Judge,
Lover, and Redeemer?
Who will exemplify
the life of uncompromising, kingdom-focused love for them, as first epitomized
by Jesus?
Sustainability
disappears on the horizon as our ship sails away.
The potential
bridge between the deceivingly distant shores of initial experience and
lifelong application never materializes.
The memory of
our faces fades in parallel to the memory of their brief brush with the divine.
Who is willing
to construct this bridge of sustainability alongside these people?
Who will help ensure
that their taste of eternity will not fail to become their daily bread?
This free verse
is my attempt to visually process and communicate some of my reflections on the
ministry of this month. We have been going on “crusades” with our ministry to
various villages in Malawi, staying for about 2 or 3 days in each place. The
focus of this ministry, Great is God International Ministries, is to spread the
Gospel to every district of Malawi, a goal striven for by way of doing these
short crusades, which include preaching, worship in song and dance, prayer, and
fellowship.
As you can tell,
its been a real struggle for me to jump in and out of peoples’ lives in ministry
like this. As much as I desire to see the Gospel preached to all people, I
believe that it needs to be given within an overarching effort to help a
community develop its own life of faith. Most of the people we ministered to
this month didn’t have Bibles or a way to get them, let alone someone to love
and mentor them in the ways of Jesus. I couldn’t keep my heart from breaking
for them each time we drove off and knew they would be stuck waiting for the
next crusade to come through, if ever, and teach them more. What will sustain
their hunger for God’s Word and their thirst for comfort, encouragement, and
training in living a life of faith amidst a world of struggle?
We live in an
imperfect world. We do our best to invoke the Spirit and manifest God’s love
through imperfect systems and structures. Thus, it is our continuous duty to
make the most of what we have to work with and trust that God can and will
fulfill our shortcomings through means to which we do not have access. This is
the track that can only be driven by faith. On some of the turns, God entreats
us to find the best approach and line on our own, while on others we can only
sit back and let Jesus take the wheel (props to Carrie Underwood for that one).
A good driver always pushes his/her car to its absolute limits and uses the
whole track, and if he/she’s smart, relies on God alone to keep the rubber on
the road.
Let me take a
brief detour. I want to be clear about something. There’s no question in my
soul that God desperately desires to reach the hearts of all people with
His/Her uncompromising love. Subsequently, I believe that using crusades as an instrument
to sound the great news of redemption and abundant life found in the life,
death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is completely valid and worthwhile. Be
sure, therefore, that I support and stand by Great is God International’s
crusade ministry. The opportunity for someone to hear the Gospel and tap into
the endless ocean of God’s grace is unarguably a good thing, something that God
uses for His/Her Kingdom. I know people who dove into God’s ocean for the first
time at a crusade (a Billy Graham crusade for instance) and are currently
living a passionate, faithful life with God, having found discipleship and a
community of faith in which to participate. So praise God for crusades!
Nevertheless, my
concerns about sustainability still stand. I stand firm on the position that some
form of sustainable discipleship and support is quintessential for the lives of
individuals and communities of faith, and also as a component of a ministry’s
focus and work. I look to Jesus and the Early Church as my sources of evidence
for this stance. Jesus’ own ministry was continual balance of discipleship and
itinerant (traveling) preaching, teaching, and healing. So much of His time was
spent training His disciples and preparing them to continue the work of the
Kingdom after Him, teaching them, taking them with Him everywhere He went, and
even sending them out to preach, teach, and heal on their own. In an underlying
way, I would argue that raising up the disciples was Jesus’ investment in the
future sustainability of His ministry, as they would inevitably lead
communities of faith later and raise disciples of their own, both of which
would hopefully include some of the people they ministered to with Jesus during
His life. In addition, without taking the time to present research, I would
also suggest that we can assume most of the people to whom Jesus ministered
were a part of or had access to a synagogue and community of faith where they
could pursue the life of faith that they had caught a glimpse of from their
interaction with the Son of God. Even more pertinent to my case, look at what
we know of the Early Church. We see in the documents of the New Testament how
most of the disciples and others established communities of faith where they
shepherded the new converts to the Way (of Messiah Jesus) (cf. Acts). Even
Paul, the great traveling Apostle to the Gentiles, wrote letters to the
communities he had established to continue supporting and discipling them. From
these letters and Acts, we see too that a system of leaders (deacons, elders,
and other church positions) had been set up to provide sustainability in these
communities’ journeys of faith when the Apostles and evangelists were no longer
there. Of course, I recognize the speculative nature of this argument, yet I
hope you see at least some of the feasibility in it that I do. The point is,
giving someone the Gospel and then leaving him/her to fend for his/herself
always has and always will be a dangerous and, I would argue, incomplete
ministry. God’s people, the Kingdom, need long-term, sustainable training,
support, and guidance for their life on this earth.
Wow, that detour
was a lot longer than I thought… o well, this is Africa (TIA), you can never
expect to have things happen on time or as planned, especially when it comes to
travel… no 4 real, you have no idea, its nuts. I think I’ll give you a break
before I get back to where I was going with making the most of all
opportunities God gives us in ministry. Check out my next blog for a story
about how God helped me do this during one of our crusades this month.
Thanks! Peace,
God bless, one love.
