mbjones

The Importance of Contact

My life now depends on others in a way that it never has before. I live in a foreign country (South Africa), have a job I volunteer at (work visas aren’t a possibility) and spend half or more of my time in ministry (with a healthy dose of community development thrown in for good measure). We wouldn’t be here without the prayers and support of friends and family across the US, and it’s those prayers and support that sustain and allow us to continue doing what God has before us.

I wouldn’t trade it for the world — my wife and I were just talking this evening about how fulfilling life feels — finally we are tangibly walking out the dream God placed in our hearts many years ago. Anyways, all this introduction is important and leads me to what I want to discuss right now: the importance of contact. I’m finding a couple of things to be true as we start this journey of living as missionaries, reliant on the support of others: (a) contact is a necessity when living as any form of community and (b) as people build into my family through prayer, encouragement and/or finances, I want to be able to build into theirs as well.

Backing up, it may be useful to start with some meaningful definitions of that word, contact. Their are two that immediately jump to mind: to be in some sort of close relationship with, perhaps better visualized by touching analogies (ie, a spark flew when my hand contacted the door) and an entity that you communicate with, in some form or fashion (ie, my contact database has about 200 people and 5 organizations). The first definition necessitates some form of close relationship whilst the second demands almost no relationship, as in I could (and do) have contacts I’ve never actually met or know on any real level.

I’ll readily admit that I have many folks in our contact database that fit this second definition to a T. There are names that I don’t recognize and people I haven’t met. As I sat pondering this some time back I decided that this needed to change. It’s been something growing within me — a recognition that a community based on anonymity and a lack of real contact (definition one again!) isn’t really community at all. And a community is what my wife and I want surrounding us. We don’t believe this thing called life was meant to be walked out alone. We want to be able to build into others as they build into us. It likely won’t take the same form — we are certainly limited in the ways we can financially give, for example — but we can still pray and encourage and visit and live transparent lives that hopefully sharpen as we ourselves are being sharpened.

To that end be mindful that if you receive our monthly email updates, give financially, pray for us or feel a part of the community surrounding my family in any other way then we want to know you. If you have prayer requests, we want to be praying for them. If you need to be encouraged, we hope we can fill that role in some way. If you just need a friend, well, we gladly offer our friendship. It may not always look normal because we live so far away, but that doesn’t mean it’s not good or needed (on both party’s parts!).

We are currently going through our contact database and beginning to email people to hopefully begin breaking barriers and truly learning about one another. And I’m excited about the friendships that are already there and those that very well could be soon.

ps. If you want in on our community email me at mbjones AT gmail DOT com or comment on this post.

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Sunday in Masi

We spent several hours in Masi again on Sunday. I normally might wait a few days before sharing about it, and lump a week together, but our time was just so encouraging I feel like it needs to be shared in its own posting.

We started off by going to the Zimbabwean Bible study that started last Sunday. At the end of our first Bible study, we asked the man that gathered the group if he would be willing to lead this week and he was (which is a great sign for longevity!). We got there yesterday and he’d gathered people again (and this time some additional people: also a good sign). He then got us started through praying together. He’d also already picked out a passage of scripture to look at and led us in that study, remembering almost all of the steps perfectly. It was just a really encouraging time. All three of us “missionaries” that were there agreed that there is great potential in this group and particularly their leader. Here are a just few reasons we are thinking this:

• Their leader gets it. He’s new to Jesus and the Bible and praying and such but he is picking it up fast. And not only that he is hungry for it, wanting to gobble up as much as possible.

• Mission is on their mind. Their leader said, in his concluding thoughts (something we all go around and do), that it wasn’t enough to just learn these things about God but that we are to share them with others. That really made me smile and we got to encourage him in this: “Yes! That is something we are to do with anyone and everyone we meet! Don’t hesitate to take what God is teaching you today and share it with any that you meet!”

• God is answering prayer in their midst. This has taken two forms so far: (a) last week we prayed for a baby that was their, probably less than 6 months old, who was covered from head to toe and an extremely bad rash. His skin literally looked scaly. But as soon as we got to the Bible study this past Sunday, the first thing they did was show us the baby who was completely healed and tell us how thankful they were to Jesus because as soon as we all got done praying for him the rash started disappearing. (b) Their leader mentioned as his greatest need knowledge in how to manage money because it seemed as soon as it came in it disappeared on things. After talking it over with my coach, we volunteered to teach him and any of his friends next week some simple budgeting techniques that could hopefully over time begin to improve his family’s quality of life.

• God is springing up within them a desire for His word and presence. They really want it, and as much of it as they can get.

Anyways — that Bible study, “pre-house church”, was super encouraging and well on its way to becoming a house church and a bright shining light on a hilltop for the rest of Masi to see.

Our next appointment didn’t show, which was disappointing but happens often enough. We did get to pray for a woman struggling with alcohol and tobacco addictions. We spent quite some time praying for release from those bonds in her life. She cried and felt like God touched her life in that time and we are hoping that it is so. She’s one that we’ll try to follow up with at some point in time, if we get a chance.

Our next appointment was our last for the day. It was with another Zimbabwean who left one previously established house church to start another (this is the kind of growth exciting to see). It was small this Sunday but good. There was also two common threads that tied this one to the first one of the day. (a) It’s leader also said that his greatest need was for understanding in managing his money (we invited him to the little class) and (b) a healing was confirmed. You might remember that on our first day in Masi we prayed for a man who had a neck injury and hadn’t been able to move his neck since November and hadn’t slept well because of it. He was at this Bible study and said that ever since we prayed he could move his neck again freely, without pain, and that that night was the first time he’d slept well in about 3 months (and he’d slept well ever since). He spent a good chunk of his talking time in the Bible study praising Jesus (which is encouraging to hear). We have hopes for this group, just as with the first, and our praying that it grows and will be nurtured by Jesus and His Word and Spirit.

So — that was my Sunday in Masi. Encouraging and exciting. The Lord is moving and I am so blessed to be a part of it. For all those praying and supporting, I hope you are blessed by these stories as well. And for everybody reading, I hope you are encouraged by the incredible God we serve.

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Masi Outreach, Week 3

I’ve got more stories to tell about outreach — they never seem to stop! We’ve had three days of it since my last note, last Sunday and Thursday and Friday.

Sunday

Sunday started with a trip to Darlington’s house. We were kind of surprised (but shouldn’t have been!) to find him waiting for us. When we got to his place, he immediately gathered his friends and family that lived around the immediate vicinity and brought them to us. In all — there were about 8 of us (which is an excellent starting point). We went through the process for having a simple Bible study, starting with prayer and then reading the text and it was quite a blessed time. When we finished a couple of really neat things happened that we should be praying about:

1. One of the guys there said that he had never considered reading the Bible before but now he was going to immediately track one down and get it and start to read (we plan on helping with this if he needs it). He definitely had a hunger for the Word of God that you really are encouraged to see.

2. One of the ladies told us that she had never prayed — had never wanted to — before we came and now she wanted to start praying to God every day. That’s quite the change and will hopefully radically change her life and she learns and discovers more about who God is.

If I didn’t say this already, I meant to: we were really encouraged by our time. Darlington even agreed to lead this coming week instead of me (breaking dependency on foreigners is a key to continued existence).

The rest of the day was spent hunting for other people. We were able to pray and talk with quite a few but that really was our power encounter for the day.

Thursday

Thursday was different for a couple of different reasons.

1. Munya, Lucas and I went into Masi an hour early and

2. I drove into Masi for the first time by myself. And I should mention that this was my first time driving anywhere in Africa further than several hundred yards. And my first time driving a stick further than several hundred yards. And that driving in Masi is insane (due to the flood of people and vehicles in the road).

Anyways, we went into Masi early to do a Bible Study early enough in the day that the women in attendance would have plenty of time to make dinner for their husbands. It was with a group of Zimbabweans and their were quite a few there (that all lived in the same complex, I think). We got their and discovered that it’d been a pretty rough week for our connector (his mom had just passed away) and so we led it using Psalm 62. It wasn’t a normal passage we use but it was what God laid on my heart and according to Munya (who is a “Zim” as he calls himself) was quite meaningful to the group. They all stayed engaged throughout and were incredibly interested in knowing God better. One lady in particular (our contact’s wife actually) even said that she was for the first time feeling compelled to seek God. That’s again, something incredibly encouraging to hear. We are likely going to try and get into Masi early on most Thursday to meet with this group.

After this, we went to another Bible Study we had scheduled. But the person of peace wasn’t home. We at first were discouraged but then we found out why she was gone: she had gotten a job! This was a total answer to prayer — she’d been without work for quite some time and asked us to pray about this the week before when we had first met her. God does work in mysterious ways beyond us. Our prayer now is that she recognizes the Lord’s provision and is even more open to His movement in her life, and that she’ll desire to be discipled and make disciples. We plan on following up again as soon as we get the chance.

Our last Bible study of the day didn’t pan out. We waited about a half hour and the guys never showed up. It’s discouraging, in one sense, when this happens but it kind of clues you in real fast on who is actually hungry and not hungry.

Friday

Friday was another crazy day. We started with taking Juli and Whitney to meet a group of teenage girls that my group had met the previous day. They seemed incredibly peaceful but we were all guys and thought it best that the girls pursue them. It was definitely a good thing. And so after dropping them off, Munya, Lucas and I went to the library in Masi to spend some time praying. We didn’t have any appointments for the day and wanted to spend it “hunting” for people. While praying for clues, Munya once again found his walking by and jumped up and started talking to him. It’s a guy that’s really interested in both having a Bible study with us and bringing his friends to it. Hopefully this will happen on Sunday. We went from there to another Zimbabwean house church (that has been around for some time) to encourage them (we felt kind of like Paul in this). They led and we joined and shared our hearts with them and it was an all around great time. It’s encouraging to see these things going on their own without the need for outsiders like ourselves.

We went from here to a meeting we had scheduled with a guy named Doctor. He wasn’t around but we found a group of three guys that wanted to know what we were doing, and upon telling them, asked us to do an impromptu study with them. We obliged (of course!) and as we were finishing the prayer time Doctor showed up and joined in too. It was a good test case Bible study — it contained people really hungry to know about God (2 of them), a gatekeeper that granted us access to the group (an older brother who isn’t all that interested) and Doctor who we really aren’t sure about. We are definitely coming back to meet the 2, and Doctor but we’ll just have to see what happens. The prayer is that reactions won’t be dependent on the action of the older brother as he’s already granted us access into their lives.

After this, it was time to call it a day…but the story doesn’t end! As we where praying early for clues, God gave me one — A white picket fence. As we walked back to meet the van taking us home, we passed a house with the white picket fence and a guy sitting outside. Being bold we stopped and told him what we were doing, that Jesus gave me a vision of his fence and that Jesus wanted him to know that He loved him and was singling him out today. He had no clue how to respond to this and kept saying, “I’m shocked! I’m amazed! I don’t know what to say.” We asked him if he knew who Jesus was and he replied that he had only heard people pray to Jesus but didn’t know anything other than that. He agreed to let me share though and share I did. When I got done he said, “I know that what you say is truth, and truth to be believed.” He said he wanted to know more and he is gathering (hopefully!) his friends and family to hear on Thursday. We got a chance to pray for him for healing (he’s been sick since November) so continue lifting him up as you read this, for the healing and that Jesus would use him to bring Kingdom change to the area he lives in.

And that brings me to the end of our last few days in Masi. Hopefully you can be encouraged by these stories. I know I am.

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CPx: Movements To Jesus, Addendum

My last CPx post dealt with what we as missionaries to Africa are hoping to see — vast movements of people coming to Christ. I wrote quite a lot about the broad notion of “church” driving these movements but didn’t deal much with our place in regards to them. It’s an important topic though and one that needs discussing. What we as outsiders do can seriously hinder or empower the people directly touched by the movements.

In more traditional models of mission, the work done typically revolves around the missionary. They are there running the schools, staffing the hospitals, pastoring the churches, or powering other access ministries legitimizing entry into a place. And this isn’t necessarily bad — sometimes this very well may be what needs to happen. It’s not the case though for the movements to Jesus we are hoping to see. They are a completely different animal, and as I started saying, are hindered if the missionary (by nature an outsider to the context of the movement) becomes a focal point.

Instead, our role as church planter becomes that of a catalyst. We most often think of catalysts in terms of chemical reactions. Catalysts are enzymes or similar compounds that are not actually a physical part of the chemical reaction — they are not used up or changed in the reaction; instead, they initiate reactions and help to speed them up. At some point in the reaction, they often become unnecessary and when all is said and done — they finish in the same state they began.

This describes what we are to do as a church planter exactly. We are there to initiate and help speed up the reaction. We do this by finding people of peace that open their networks — friends and family and any other social groups they might be involved with — to the Gospel. The people of peace, not the the church planter, then gathers. They become the facilitators, not us. At no point in the process does anything ever revolve around us; the idea is that if we were for what ever reason unable to go into the area again, the groups would continue because all along in the process, they were empowered to lead themselves and not rely on us.

This isn’t to say we have no place in leadership or discipleship in these movements. Rather we carry an important role: it is we who disciple those initial people of peace. Everything we’ve been trained in — glorifying God, loving one another, and seeking those that are lost — we pass on to those initial people of peace (as well as the basics in simple church facilitation). And we continue to meet with them and stay in relationship with them, often for years, until there truly is no further need of an outsider. But they should quickly carry the mantel of discipling others who disciple others who disciple others. And here is were our job for many becomes difficult: it necessitates a background role. As it works, we should only be “known” by that first generation. As successive generations are produced, our place in the picture fades (and quite rapidly sometimes).

Anyways, this is an important addendum to what I wrote in the last post. It’s important that we see our place clearly and know that, as an outsider, we can never be leaders in these movements to Christ. Instead we raise up leaders on the inside. We do have important roles but being the man on top isn’t one of them (and won’t ever be).

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CPx: Movements To Jesus

If you keep up with modern missiology (the study of missions) and what various organizations and people are doing and strategizing around, you might have heard the term “Church Planting Movements” thrown around. There is a book all about it, in fact, put out by the IMB (the missions board of the Southern Baptist Church). For the unawares, CPMs are modern movements of extremely large completely unreached and unchurched peoples coming to Christ rapidly. And by many and rapidly we are talking about a scale of tens of thousands of people (or more) coming to Christ in a years time or hundreds or more churches being planted in the same timeframe. So very rapid and very large growth.

It’s something we often don’t hear much about in the west. We’ve probably all heard about one popular example though — the underground church in a certain large Asian country that is slowly opening up. As I said, these tend to be the focus more than anything else of mission organizations across the board as God is moving in mind blowing ways. They tend to all have several characteristics, which I’ll dig more into in the coming weeks as we study here at CPx; we’ve only begun to scratch the surface, and it is a quite deep topic.

It’s an important topic to us as a part of All Nations as they have missionaries across the globe focusing on seeing this very thing. In the face of an increasingly flattening world, and the threat of an ever encroaching secularism of the west, these CPMs (or Movements to Jesus as we are more apt to call them) are changing this planet for the better. It’s because of them that the two thirds world is rising up to take the spiritual mantel from the west.

In our first week, we began to talk about these movements, and it started with a frank discussions about the nature of church and how we view it. We started by discussing our views of church, particularly our terminology in describing it. We have many words and phrases used and it’s interesting to compare those within the Bible to those external to it. Some of the external (read: nonbiblical) words we came up with were, “Building”, “Place”, “Parachurch”, “Organization” and other such words. These words tend to focus on church as meeting — as something external to a people — to more of a gathering or venue or more simply put, a non living and active thing. Words that describe church that we pulled directly from the Bible were things like “Body”, “Bride”, “People”, “Ecclesia”, “Brethren”, “Saints”, “House”, “household”, “Living Temple”, “Royal Priesthood”. The focus in this terminology set is not on the place or building or any non-living thing, but rather on the community itself. Church is a community of people — of followers of Jesus — and its this collective that makes Church what it is.

All Nations (the organization we are training with and joining) sees themselves (rightly) as this. Better put — they are a community of small simple churches. Simple church is the focus as they are (a) easily reproducible (b) put church in the hands of people and not in a the hands of a few leaders and (c) frankly, the form in which the vast majority of movements to Jesus are taking across the globe.

But its important to note that the focus shouldn’t be on the wineskin, so to speak. We had a frank discussion about Luke 5 and wine and wineskins. When I say wineskin in this context, I’m simply referring to some sort of structure. Simple Church then is a wineskin and it isn’t the focus. Yes — it is what is working best in our context and in our particular mission but that isn’t to say we chase after to the exclusion of all other models. We have to be attune to the Holy Spirit and the wine (getting back to the aforementioned parable of Jesus) that’s being poured. It could very well be that a different structure (perhaps a more traditional model?) is what is appropriate for other contexts.

I’ll admit to be slightly biased here — it’s hard to think of a context where simple church wouldn’t work fantastically well. It empowers people rather than leaders. It involves the church as a whole, inviting everyone to truly bring something to the table. It’s bent around fellowship and more often than not involves people walking in mission together. I’ve seen it work in American contexts (NormCom for example) as well as African, Asian and Latin American. But you never know — as surely as I write this I could easily one day find myself back in something more traditional.

Anyways, as I wrote it’s the structure that is much less important than what goes into it. Really this God’s concern (even though its so often not ours). As a church, All Nations sees three key ingredients to church: Worship, Mission, and Community. These three things are necessary, in fact for the health of the church. When you boil the Bible down, we see the purpose of the church wrapped up in these areas: to glorify God above any other, to love one another as He loved us and to go forth and disciple nations. And these three things are what we are seeing across the globe as necessary pieces in the movements to Jesus. It’s where we start and where we start them.

Look for more on this and other aspects of Movements To Jesus coming soon!

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Masi Outreach, Day 1

Yesterday (Friday) was our first outreach day. I’ll back up a minute — during CPx, every week we have two day of lectures and 3 of outreach where we go into the communities and practice what we have learned. Masiphumelele (Masi for short) is the community that Juli and I will be working in. We are definitely excited about working here for several reasons — for one, it is where we have worked in the past so there is some sense of it that kind of feels like home and for two, it is the type of community we envision ourselves working in long term. This isn’t to say that Masi is the community we will forever work in (for various reasons, we aren’t expecting this) but it is the atmosphere and type of community that tugs at our hearts.

Anyways, yesterday was our first day of getting into the community for outreach and the our first opportunity to practice all that we had learned. We’ve been broken up into d-groups of 6 or 7 for these outreaches, and further divided into 2s and 3s and 4s for the purpose of ministering (a group of 7 is rather intimidating to people — we aren’t wanting to gang up on them!). For this and future trips, we are really focused on planting simple churches and so we were looking for peaceful people — people that would open a community or network of people to the Gospel as well as finding people that would intentionally gather their friends and families for little “Bible Studies.”

This last part is key (and in many ways paradigm shifting). When we’ve been here in the past, we’ve focused pretty heavily on finding as many people as possible and grouping them together. Often the people aren’t in any way relationally connected which makes the groups dependent on the outsider for gathering and providing the special sauce that makes the people stick together. This time though we are intentionally not doing that but rather getting locals to gather their people. For more about this, keep following my blog.

Back to the story of outreach numero uno. I went with two other guys — our coach Munya (who is from Zimbabwe) and Lucas (who is actually from Masi). We went out and pretty immediately found 3 different guys who told us that they (a) were interested in studying the Bible and (b) were interested in gathering their friends and families. And they were interested enough to give us their phone numbers so that we could SMS them to remind them. The last man in particular (Richard) we felt particularly good about. He not only seemed interested but also excited.

As we were leaving Richard’s place, we passed a house where a woman called out to us. She had heard about us (or people like us) and had some questions about faith and wanted prayer. We shared with her about Jesus and answered her questions and told her testimonies of His love in Masi. We then prayed for her and it seemed incredibly impactful — she was in tears when we got done and immediately asked us to come back to study the Bible with her (and that she wanted to do the same as the guys: gather friends and family). So we were quite encouraged by this point. I wasn’t expecting quite this response. I knew Masi as a spiritually hungry place, but expected a bit more resistance to the gathering concept. And we may run into it — we’ll find out next week if anyone is “gathered” but I have a lot of hope.

I know I would have probably been thrilled if this was the end of the story for the day but it wasn’t. Our next encounter was with a man named Eddy. He was also from Zimbabwe and was just passing through Masi. We still got an opportunity to share with and pray for him though. And he was another person left changed by the love and presence of God. He’d been struggling with pretty serious neck pain for several months. When we first met him he actually couldn’t move it at all. But we prayed! And Jesus healed! And the pain went away and he could move it again!

And this isn’t even the end of the story — we had two more significant encounters with people! They both revolve around a Zimbabwean house church that meets in another part of Masi. Susan, a woman in it (but who lives elsewhere in Masi) took us to her home and had us pray for her pregnancy. I felt like the Lord was asking me to pray Isaiah 40:31 for her (which I did) and she was really touched. She is even wanting to try and gather her neighbors to start a Bible study (which we were all surprised and excited about since she is already a part of the other). After this, we got to teach the Zimbabwean house church how to facilitate meetings and pray times without us which is significant — prior to this they had been reliant on us outsiders for meeting times and facilitation.

Anyways all that said and done — we were really excited about our first trip into Masi and can’t wait to see what else God does with our time there.

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The Other Journal at Mars Hill Graduate School :: “With Sighs Too Deep for Words”: On Praying With the Victims in Haiti by Nathan R. Kerr

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CPX: Debriefing

Our first week at CPx was filled with lots of ground work to set up the coming days, weeks and months. One of the first things we did was talk debriefing. Debriefing is the act of coming together as a group (or personally if you are the journalling type) and actively talking about something (it could be anything) that you walked through. Some might call it an art form as it involves mulling over the events and their associated thoughts and emotions to connect them in such a way that you grow and learn from the experience.

It’s something I’ve actively done on mission trips in the past but haven’t been as adept at applying it more generally. It does have application though and can be a great tool to process life and everything within it. It also does have a Biblical basis; the narrative underlying the first portion of Luke 10 is just one example of this. In it, Jesus sends 72 disciples out in pairs to visit villages, find people of peace and bring the Kingdom of heaven to their doorsteps. He then also calls them back to Himself and has them report on what they saw and felt. In any case, I think debriefing is a practical tool to help process through whatever life throws at a person.

We were taught two different models: the BASIC model and the AI model.

The BASIC model, as the name implies, is pretty straightforward (not that the AI method isn’t). It involves asking yourself and others 4 simple questions:

1. What did you see happen?
2. What did you feel?
3. What did you learn?
4. What is God saying in the midst of this event?

As I said, there isn’t much to it. The AI method, I think, is a bit more nuanced and attempts to more directly connect past or current behavior and thoughts with what you’ll do in the future.

AI stands for Appreciative Inquiry. The AI method attempts to put the focus specifically on what God is doing rather than on what our enemy has done or might be trying to do. In this way it actively seeks to map the movement of God rather than the movement of the devil (generally speaking, it is always healthier and better to map God rather than the devil). It too consists of 4 similar questions.

1. What made your heart come alive (or phrased differently, what was most life giving or energizing)?
2. Why is it like that?
3. What would you change about your experience or what do you wish would have happened?
4. What are you going to do next time?

The first question seeks to get at the heart of the experience, connecting your passions with what actually happened, regardless of how loose those connections might be. It gets you talking and thinking and feeling the experience in such a way that perhaps connections you didn’t originally see become visible. For example, I am going to consider this question in the light of what I saw and felt upon first seeing extreme poverty several years ago. At that time I had no clue how to process what I was seeing and I (unfortunately) locked those thoughts and feelings away for a good long while where they just festered. Had I been actively looking for what made my heart alive in that circumstance — praying for the TB patients, providing running water to a family without it, seeing the joy in a child’s eyes as he learned to walk — I could have begun to process the passions in my own heart and come up with something of a response. Alas, hindsight is always 20/20 and doesn’t really matter that much now — the processing eventually got done.

The second question gets at the specific values behind the experiences brought up by question one. It places those experiences in the broader context of our life and God’s design.

The third and fourth questions are similar and begin to connect the experience and value to growth. The third question examines specifically what you wished would have happened and what you would change, if you had a chance to do it all over. The fourth actively presses you to think about the next time you might be faced with that or a similar situation and let what you learned mature your response.

So debriefing. I have this inkling of a suspicion that we are going to be doing a lot of this foreseeable future. But that’s OK. I think it’s supposed to be like that. After all, at some level it sounds an awful lot like what discipleship is supposed to be all about.

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Whoever Said Short Term Trips Were A Waste of TIme?

I’ve often heard it said that short term trips are a waste of time. Some claim that those on them just tend to “get in the way” by distracting long-term missionaries from their mission, whatever it might be. Others have said it’s an excuse for comfortable Christians to take a “vacation” while masquerading as mission focused individuals. Other people tend to make up other stories and excuses too.

I don’t buy it though.

I mean, sometimes it might be true. There are times I wonder with some of the trips I’ve heard about in my days. You’ve probably heard of those I’m talking about too — the ones that sound like wild and crazy adventures that might include a bit of evangelism (or might not). But by and large I think many times when we pull out the “waste of time” card, we do so erroneously.

So why do I say this?

The biggest reason is the overwhelming amount of evidence that lives are forever changed by short term teams. My church in the states, for example, has sent short term teams to Cape Town, South Africa the past 3 US summers (it’s actually winter then in Cape Town). On those trips we saw God move in many incredible ways. Lots of people professed HIS name for the first time. Many of those (and others) were healed of infirmities as serious as TB. Still others saw God move into their lives in ways they have never experienced before.

On those trips, we worked in a particular township called Masiphumelele (Masi for short). And if you are reading this blog, you likely know that my wife and I are currently in cross cultural church planting school called CPx which started a week ago. We were so encouraged upon arriving to find out that their are 3 people from Masi actually in CPx! One woman was led to Christ by a few women on our short term trip 2 summers ago. The other two also have less direct but ties none the less to our short term trips. And it’s so exciting to see that fruit matured and so encouraging to know that God can and will mightily use short term trips. They aren’t just sightseeing ventures for Christians and definitely will, when walked out in the right attitude, radically affect the kingdom.

There are other readily apparent benefits too. Short term trips can do wonders to encourage long term missionaries. They can allow for a more targeted, direct and focus mission that might normally take a long term team a while to get into. They often can allow long term workers to rest for a period (particularly in the case of the AIDs orphanage I worked with 3 summers ago). And they often allow for individuals with specialized skills to briefly provide services to those that might need them.

I’m definitely for short term mission trips and encourage everyone to go on one at some point in their life. If you are looking for a place to go — I heartily recommend Cape Town, especially after the World Cup finishes in July.

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A Wealthy Life?

I find the prosperity gospel to be most objectionable. The idea that God wants us to be self absorbed — focused on our own health, wealth and western ideals of prosperity — has done more to harm the kingdom of God than build it up. It also directly contradicts Biblical, particularly New Testament, notions of kingdom living.

I was reminded this once again while reading on the plane. I started reading Luke again but before jumping into the text, I asked for God to highlight simple things that I’d missed before. One of those dealt specifically with our false notions of prosperity and kingdom living. It comes specifically from Luke 5 and is the story of Jesus and the fishermen.

3 He got into5 one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then Jesus sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing! But at your word I will lower the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets started to tear. 7 So they motioned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they were about to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For Peter and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so were James and John, Zebedee’s sons, who were Simon’s business partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” 11 So when they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Here is something amazing. Jesus is traveling with these fisherman and teaches some from their boat. What exactly — we don’t know. We could probably guess a little bit — it seems that often Jesus taught about what the kingdom of God is like, through parables and stories and simple truths, like in the sermons on the mount and plains. He often spoke of an alternative lifestyle — one lived in a subversive opposition to the dominant culture.

And here are these fishermen. They first recognized that in Jesus, there was someone worth listening to. Even though they had been out fishing all night with nothing to show for their hard work, they were willing to take Jesus at His word. When He said, ”Lower your nets” they did, and to their amazement caught more fish than they likely had ever seen at one given time. They even had to call another boat over to hold all of the excess. For these fishermen, this likely represented an enormous wealth such that they didn’t often come across.

For us in the states, more often than not it seems that this would have been the end of the story. God is supposed to bless us with wealth beyond measure. It’s an expectation to live and walk in. And sadly this satisfies us. So often we leave it at that (wealth accumulation as outward sign of blessing) and ignore the greater truth of what abundance and wealth truly is.

Thankfully though for Simon Peter and his business partners, this wasn’t a sufficient end to the story. They are amazed at the wealth but more amazed with Jesus. Jesus’ abundance immediately draws attention to their deficiency. But not the deficiency of their pocketbooks — the deficiency of their hearts.

And what they did next is truly amazing. As soon as they got to shore they left all of that new found wealth behind (as well as everything else that they had) to follow Jesus. The wealth truly didn’t matter a single bit when contrasted with Jesus (the source of all our life). Worldly wealth pales in comparison with the wealth of a heart filled with His kingdom.

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