The Beauty and the Geek
This link is to Eric Chapman’s blog where he recently posted a reflection on our time in Moldova. Eric was too kind with his words in this post.
I would only add that we too wondered what we were getting ourselves into. Stacy Leigh had only met Eric and Stephanie once, and I had only spoken to them over the phone. However, we quickly found friends and mentors in them. They made Moldova easy for us. They are veteran missionaries and have seen and experienced much more than we could ever imagine.
I highly recommend subscribing to Eric’s blog where he will begin telling many of his stories from years of missionary experience.
Let the Nations Be Glad!
“Missions exist because worship doesn’t” (17; all page numbers are from the second edition). I have now read Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions by John Piper three times, and every time I have been arrested by the truth in that simple sentence, which summarizes the most important point of the entire book. All activities of the Christian and of the church can be summarized in these two categories: worship and missions. Worship—a whole-being satisfaction in God—is the reason for our creation, the purpose of our redemption, and the endless, joyful, activity of our perfection in eternity. “Worship is ultimate” (17). Missions exist because multitudes of persons and peoples across the globe do not worship God, and thus bring infinite dishonor to the infinitely valuable One and eternal sorrow to themselves.
Worship is both the fuel and the goal of missions because the greatest desire of God is to glorify himself. We are fueled to pursue God’s mission when we are consumed with the same joy that God has—namely the joy of satisfaction in God’s own perfection. “There will be no passion to draw others into our worship where there is no passion for worship” (43). We will never commend what we do not cherish (17). We achieve the goal of missions when people repent of worshiping false gods that cannot satisfy and joyfully find satisfaction in the one true God. This satisfaction in God brings the greatest glory to God. This principle brings a major correction to the tendency of missionaries and missions mobilizers to utilize guilt and pity as motivation for missions. The only motivation that can truly endure the test of time is the motivation of God himself—joy in global worship!
Prayer serves as the means of God’s getting the glory in missions since it “gives us the significance of frontline forces and gives God the glory of a limitless Provider” (45). Prayer was meant as a “wartime walkie-talkie” to be used by those seeking to accomplish God’s mission, but we turn it into a “domestic intercom…not to call in firepower for conflict with a mortal enemy but to ask for more comforts in the den” (49). Every time I read these words, I am saddened by my own tendency to lose sight of prayer’s purpose. True prayer is always marked by earnestness and urgency. Everyday I must pray to tell God that I trust him and that Christ is enough. Without prayer lesser things seem greater and greater things lesser.
Suffering also gives God the glory in missions because “the greatness of his worth is seen most clearly when we are willing to give up our lives for the sake of his love” (232). Missions is more than convincing people to pay lip service to God all the while remaining satisfied in other things. God’s mission is accomplished when persons are so satisfied in God that the loss of everything is as nothing. Those missionaries who have been used by God throughout the centuries were not necessarily brilliant men, although many were. What unites the great missionaries of history is an uncompromising commitment to give all—even life itself—for Christ and his gospel. Desire for the American Dream, the easy-life, and comfort pulls constantly at my heart. How many times have I had to pray for help to put to death these desires that set themselves up as tiny deities competing for the worship of God who alone is worthy. Sometimes it is easier for me to imagine choosing Christ over life if someone was poking an AK-47 into my back than it is to make everyday decisions on the basis of Christ’s worth; but we must declare Christ’s sufficiency in both the exceptional and the mundane decisions of life.
The worth of God, our worship of him, and the resulting necessity of missions cannot be divorced from three theological truths: First, hell is eternal, conscious torment under the wrath of God without annihilation, rescue, or a second chance. Second, Christ’s work of redemption was necessary to provide eternal salvation for all people, and third conscious faith in Christ is necessary to experience the eternal salvation achieved by Christ. In short, faith in what Christ has done is the exclusive way of experiencing salvation from God’s eternal wrath in hell against our infinite sin.
The Bible reveals that God’s greatest glory will be seen when a diversity of peoples are united to worship a universally appealing God. Surprisingly, the task of missions is not to seek the salvation of as many individuals as possible. Scripture defines the task as seeking the salvation of as many people groups as possible—“making disciples of all nations (Greek: panta ta ethnē)” (Matt 28:19). Therefore, “the ultimate goal of God in all of history is to uphold and display his glory for the enjoyment of the redeemed from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (234).
After further study, I have come to disagree with Piper on two minuscule points. First, Piper focuses on the promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, which says that in Abraham “all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” He then defines families as a unit somewhere between a tribe and a household (194). According to Piper, the promise to Abraham requires that every one of these small and closely related groups in the world today must be penetrated with the gospel, but what he fails to mention is the context of Genesis 12:3. “All the families of the earth” clearly refers to all the families descended from Noah that were scattered due to the pride of Babel in Genesis 10-11. God was indicating that “all the families of the earth” in Abraham’s day, rather than our own, would be blessed, and since these families have since grown and divided and multiplied, it seems that the term “families” is not as helpful in defining the missionary task as “nations” is Matthew 28:19.
Second, Piper distinguishes between the evangelist and the missionary. “The passion of a missionary—as distinct from that of an evangelist—is to plant a worshiping community in a people group who has no access to the gospel because of language or cultural barriers” (208). Evangelists on the other hand seek the salvation of individuals within an already reached people group. While this distinction may be helpful for our modern church practice, it does not necessarily come from Scripture, especially considering that the word “missionary” is never used in the Bible (Though some would hold that missionary which descends from the Latin word for “sent” is equivalent to apostle in the New Testament, which literally means “one who is sent”). Evangelist, however, occurs three times (Acts 21:8; Eph 4:11; 2 Tim 4:5). Our greatest clue to the meaning of the term evangelist is that Philip is identified as one (Acts 21:8). Why was Philip an evangelist? He proclaimed the gospel and planted a worshiping community among the Samaritans, who previously had no access to the gospel because of cultural barriers.
Having now read this book for the third time, I can confidently say that outside of the Bible no other book has impacted my life more than this one. I have summarized the contents of this book in a simple phrase that defines the goal and motivation of my service as a missionary and my very life—“all peoples worshiping God in Christ.” Missions—and the Christian life for that matter—are radically centered on the worship of God. God is only accessible “in Christ,” and the great hope of history—the massive privilege of the Christian life—is to be engaged with God in seeing “all peoples”—every tribe, language, people, and nation—completely satisfied in God. When we are satisfied in God’s perfection, all sorrows fade and perfect joy shines forth like the dawning of a new day.
The Gibbs Family Called to Arizona
God has a purpose and is working all things together to accomplish that purpose. What is God’s purpose? For all peoples to worship God in Christ.
I believe this, first, because it is biblical. God has revealed this purpose clearly in Scripture, but I also believe this because I have seen and experienced God’s sovereign working.
In my youth group at Hardin Baptist Church, God aligned several factors to accomplish his purpose. Besides giving us a faithful pastor in Bro. Ricky Cunningham, he gave us a youth pastor, Bro. Trad York, who cared more about teaching us God’s word than hosting lock-ins. God also gave us Bro. Michael and Diana Lawrence who taught us to be missionaries in our own backyard, and he took one of our friends from this earth into his presence, teaching us the brevity and seriousness of life.
Today, my friends and I are beginning to see how God was using those factors in our formative years to accomplish his purpose. From our youth group, God has produced a youth pastor, a Campus Crusade minister, a Bible college student, an international missionary, and many others who faithfully serve (not just attend) their local churches. Now, we can add two more missionaries to that list.
Eric and Brittany Gibbs were happy where God had placed them. Eric was the youth pastor of Freemont Baptist Church near Paducah, Kentucky. He loved the church, and the church loved him. They had bought a home where their two kids, Ella and Brayden, could grow up near their grandparents. They were thankful for all of God’s grace in their lives.
But after going on a mission trip to southern Arizona, God began to work in the hearts of Eric and Brittany. Without having discussed it with each other, both were simultaneously feeling God’s calling to serve as missionaries.
In January, they will be moving their family from Kentucky to Sacaton, Arizona, where they will proclaim the Gospel in the Gila River and Tohono O’odham Native American Reservations.
Despite being part of the U.S., these two Indian nations suffer from immense poverty and social problems. Unemployment is 50% at the Tohono O’odham reservation and 30% at Gila River. As we have also seen in Moldova, alcohol abuse is epidemic there because of the hopelessness.
50% of teens drop out of high school. In the town of Sacaton alone, there are 291 students in the elementary school, but the high school only has 67. Part of this problem is that teen girls are expected to get pregnant multiple times before they are 18.
The Pima Indians who live at Gila River are the second most obese people in modern history. 80% have type 2 diabetes, and the life expectancy is only 46 years old.
Native Americans have the highest suicide rate of any group in the U.S.
On these two reservations, less than 1% of people are Christians.
Yet, remarkably, these nations are allowing the Gibbs family to live and work among them. They will be planting and strengthening indigenous churches, as well as creating programs to confront the social problems with Gospel-based help. They will be doing everything from creating prevention programs to counseling incarcerated men to working with the foster care system.
They are taking on a God-sized project, but God has a purpose and is working all things together to accomplish that purpose. There will be persons from the Pima and Tohono O’odham nations worshiping before the throne of God and the Lamb!
Please pray for the Gibbs family. You can follow their prayer needs on their blog.
Please give to them. They have only a few months to raise their support before they move to Arizona. They are trusting God. Is God burdening your heart for this family and for the nations they will serve? You can give online at the North American Mission Board website.
Pastors and other church leaders: they are looking for churches to speak to and share God’s heart for these peoples. You can email them at liveloveaz@gmail.com.
May all peoples—from Eastern Europe to southern Arizona—worship God in Christ!
How the Cooperative Program Hinders Great Commission Resurgence
I am specially qualified to make these observations because I am what some might consider as an oxymoron. I am a Southern Baptist serving as an independent missionary. I grew up attending an SBC church. God saved and called me to ministry at an SBC camp ran by LifeWay. I pastored an SBC church for over two years. I am a graduate from Boyce College and a current student of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. An SBC church ordained and commissioned me for my work, and I am supported both by the prayers and money of Southern Baptists. Paul could say that he was “a Hebrew of Hebrews,” and I can say that I am a Southern Baptist of Southern Baptists.
Even so, I serve God in Moldova as an “independent missionary.” I do not serve with the International Mission Board (IMB). I do not receive money through the CP or the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Instead, I have contacted and visited a number of churches, groups, and individuals across Kentucky, Tennessee, and Illinois who have given sacrificially to support what God is doing through our work here in Eastern Europe.
As we prepare for the month of June, I am excited about the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force and their report. I am in complete agreement with their report, even though I wish it had gone farther to reform certain aspects of the SBC. It is my hope that the Annual Meeting will accept the report and that the changes will serve as a catalyst for Great Commission resurgence.
The history of the SBC commitment to the Great Commission is a remarkable one. Adoniram Judson (and his wife Ann) and Luther Rice laid its foundations at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These two men were commissioned by the Congregationalists of New England (who believed in infant baptism) to work as missionaries in India. Knowing that they would meet the great Baptist missionary William Carey upon arrival, both Judson and Rice, who were sailing on separate ships, studied baptism in the Bible, and both were independently convinced from their studies that infant baptism was not Scriptural. So, upon arriving in India, Rice was sent back to America to break ties with the Congregationalists and to raise support for missions among the Baptists of America.
Rice tirelessly traveled to churches raising funds for missions and helping to found the Triennial Convention. Rice’s method of traveling to churches to raise support would become the dominant method of support raising for years to come, even after the split between Northern and Southern Baptists.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Lottie Moon would make the second great contribution to the SBC Great Commission heritage by suggesting that Southern Baptist women should imitate Methodist women and take up a special offering for international missions at Christmas. Eventually this offering would be named after her and continues today as the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for international missions.
Despite the contributions of Rice and Moon, at the beginning of the twentieth century the SBC found itself in trouble. The entities of the SBC and of its sister state conventions had multiplied, and churches were continuously receiving appeals from field workers for money to support everything from international missions to orphanages and hospitals to seminaries and colleges. Some entities received more than enough while others were struggling to survive. This method was also unreliable, making budgeting nearly impossible, and overall the SBC was in bad financial order. “Furthermore,” write Brand and Hankins, “the cost of raising the money sometimes approached 50 percent of the proceeds” (One Sacred Effort, 3)
A plan that originated with H. Boyce Taylor, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Murray, Kentucky, emerged and was adopted by the SBC in 1925 to solve the problem—the Cooperative Program. Essentially, churches give a portion of their offerings to their state convention. The state convention keeps a portion and divides it among its various entities and sends the rest to the SBC, which gives 50% of its portion to the IMB and divides the rest among its other entities.
The efficiency of this unified plan for giving has become part of SBC folklore. The CP transformed the SBC from a struggling and unfocused denomination in the early twentieth century into the largest missionary sending denomination in the world. However, it is this very efficiency that hinders Great Commission resurgence today.
When the CP was adopted in 1925, everything about our society was moving toward the more efficient. The Industrial Revolution made specialized trades and agricultural processing into assembly line work at a huge factory, but now as we look back at these moves toward efficiency we realize that we have lost something very special—something vital to our humanity. Efficiency eliminates personal connection. Assembly lines could manufacture more rifles at lower cost and in less time than a gunsmith, but the personal satisfaction of an artist at work was traded for the mindless repetition of the factory.
Wal-Mart is in the business of efficiency. Because of their large stores and even larger warehouses, Wal-Mart is able to offer more selection at lower prices with a greater profit than their smaller competitors. So, when a Super Wal-Mart with grocery, clothes, shoes, jewelry, pharmacy, hardware, home and garden, toys, electronics, and arts and crafts departments is built in a given town, it easily replaces ten mom-and-pop specialty stores on the court square of Small Town, U.S.A. Those small stores were personal. Those stores had character, and you could get to know the owners; but every Wal-Mart looks basically the same and every Wal-Mart associate wears the same impersonal blue vest. Efficiency is inherently impersonal.
The problem with the CP is that it is impersonal. It creates a gap between the churches and their mission boards that we as Baptists denounce in our ecclesiology and missiology. Missionaries and other board representatives are no longer compelled to visit churches and to know the Southern Baptists that they serve. In the CP mythology, we applaud this innovation since IMB missionaries can spend their furloughs resting rather than tirelessly calling pastors and visiting churches like their support-raising counterparts.
But this gap between our missionaries and our churches will eventually prove the end to Great Commission effectiveness for the SBC. For a couple of generations, this gap was bridged by denominational education, but today the Woman’s Missionary Union, Girls in Action, and Royal Ambassadors are going the way of the dodo bird. They are being replaced by non-denominational equivalents with little or no missions focus like Awana or Beth Moore Bible study groups. Whether this change is good or bad can be debated, but that it is happening cannot be disputed; and a revival of denominational-based programs seems beyond unlikely.
So, today, the SBC is made up of churches that are separated from their missionaries. They receive bulletin inserts, a magazine, and videos for Lottie Moon promotion, but they do not know their missionaries. In fact, as I visited SBC churches to raise support, I was told more than once that I was the first missionary anyone could remember visiting their church. How can there be a Great Commission resurgence as long as the majority of Southern Baptist are no more engaged or invested than a monthly bulletin insert? We are raising a generation of Southern Baptists that is not educated about missions and that has never met a missionary, yet we expect them to passionately obey the Great Commission through SBC mechanisms. We expect them to give sacrificially to something they have no personal connection to, and we expect them to feel God’s calling to the mission field, something that is no more real to them than outer space. What used to be called the Foreign Mission Board has truly become foreign to SBC churches because of the efficiency of the CP.
Of course, we need an efficient program, and if we could fix some of the CP’s problems (like state conventions keeping over 50%) then the CP could be that efficient program for missions funding. However, we need a personal program, a program that makes every Southern Baptist personally committed to and personally connected with Great Commission work.
What we need is for missionaries and churches to get connected. Missionaries strengthen churches, and churches strengthen missionaries. Churches need to seek missionaries to come and share their work with them. Churches need to try to create personal commitments and connections with missionaries, and this is as easy as the pastor calling the IMB and requesting a missionary speaker.
But at the same time, SBC missionaries should not wait around for a phone call. You would benefit from being known, loved, supported, and prayed for beyond your home church and your seminary church. Take on the mindset of an independent missionary. Write letters. Give away prayer cards, and most importantly visit churches. While you can’t raise money for yourself, you could encourage the churches you visit to take up love offerings and send the money to the IMB. Initially, we were intimidated by having to raise support, but now we would not trade the experience for anything. There are thousands of people that keep up with us and lift us up to the throne of grace who would have never met us or prayed for us if we had not visited their church. I hope that SBC missionaries could have this same experience.
The more SBC churches that have an active participation in God’s mission through the SBC because of their personal connection with SBC missionaries, the more churches we will have passionately praying for specific requests, sacrificially giving to Great Commission work through the CP and Lottie Moon, and continually commissioning their members as missionaries through the IMB and NAMB.
Your Labor Is Not In Vain
In 2004, I travelled to Brazil for two weeks on a mission trip and came back with many “God stories.” We saw people saved and many baptized. We even saw a paraplegic man who trusted in Christ and was baptized (pictured above), and we saw a church replanted among an indigenous tribe. I will never forget those moments that we saw God work in the Amazon.
However, there is a great difference between short-term mission trips and longer-term assignments, and when attempting to answer my friend’s question, I had a short-term mindset.
When on a mission trip for one or two weeks, leaders have planned your experience in order to maximize the amount of time spent serving. This is why mission trips are so physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausting. Not only are you being forced to cope with a different place, culture, and language, but you are also spending eight to twelve hours every day teaching children, sharing the Gospel, working in construction, or providing medical care.
If a residential missionary lived like this, he or she would either burn out or die from exhaustion. Furthermore, the residential missionary must take care of more mundane tasks that are often taken care of for the visiting mission team like buying groceries or changing the oil in the car.
Also, the residential missionary must deal with the increasing familiarity of their home. Because you are merely visiting a place when on a short trip, you see everyone as a person in need of the gospel, but when you live in a place for a year, people begin to look just like, well, people.
I don’t want to discourage anyone, but I do want to make this point: missionary life isn’t a non-stop mission trip filled with fast-paced action and a multitude of visible results.
Few have been the days when people wept because of what the Holy Spirit was saying to them through my preaching. I have had many, many more days of working in my office—preparing lectures and grading papers. Long-term ministry overseas is like long-term ministry anywhere. It is long-term. True fruit is rarely ever immediate.
So, when someone asks for “God stories,” sometimes a missionary can feel guilty for not having the over-abundance that the mission team had when returning from a two-week trip. Thankfully, God has given us 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”
As the hymn says, “when Satan tempts me to despair” and I think that my ministry is a waste of time, I need to be reminded of that simple truth: success in the ministry is not measured by results. It is measured by faithfulness.
Being “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” takes stern persistence and hard work. To always abound in the work of the Lord will take a deeper motivation than a feeling of pity for the poor and the lost. It requires more of us than simply riding the emotional wave created by hearing a good sermon, reading a missionary biography, or even going on a two-week trip. The work of the Lord requires that we live “worthy of the gospel of Christ”—that is a life based upon the redemptive work of Jesus in his death and resurrection (Phil 1:27). We must live a GospelLife.
If you do this, then “in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians 15 after an extensive discussion of the resurrection. The previous verse says, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:57). Our labor can never be in vain “in the Lord” because “through our Lord Jesus Christ” we have already been given victory. In the day of Christ, “when the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality,” our victory will be revealed in its perfection (1 Cor 15:54).
But for now we remain in the Last Days, the time between the two comings of Christ meant for the proclamation of the Gospel to the entire world, and we long for the Rest that is to come. Now, however, we must live and labor for the Gospel, having this irrevocable promise—a life lived for the Gospel is never wasted. Our labor is not in vain. Christ’s victory will be displayed for, in, and through us no matter what the immediate results may feel like or seem. This is my God story—I have victory through Christ and in Christ my labor is not in vain!
“To God be the glory! Great things he hath done!”
