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Bringing neighbors together

Treks

Even when we try to bring good news into a city or an entire nation, we should not overlook our own neighborhood. We recently had our second annual National Night Out, and had a good turnout of folks from our street. The fire truck, and police car stopped by for awhile. I was glad for all who came out, especially my muslim friends – the kids loved the fire truck! Often we don’t need to travel far to find a #NearFrontiersTREK.

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Our approach is to supply the hamburgers (halal beef for muslims) with buns and all the extras.

A couple weeks beforehand I visit each home with a flyer stating the time and date. I ask that they bring a bag of chips or salad or dessert if they want to, but its completely optional. Usually people bring a chair and, if it rains, some guys get out their canopies. There is a great spirit of working together! Check out the National Night Out website if you want to connect with your local police and fire departments. Otherwise, you can do this anytime on your own.

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“Play” – Jump cultural hurdles for Christ

Cross cultures with love, Our Vision & Mission, ,

Previously…

So, would you care to know how the Antioch church hit the “Play” button?

Acts 11:20 says, “But some of them were men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus.”

Who were these “men from Cyprus and Cyrene”? They were (likely) Jews who had come to believe in the Messiah; they were on the move, scattered. Members of the huge Christian diaspora of those days. And they had courage to speak to people who were different…specifically the Hellenists.

Who were the “Hellenists” (or in the NIV, “Greeks”)? Before the Roman Empire, there was the Greek Empire which, thanks to the exploits of Alexander the Great, spread from Italy to present-day Iran. With the kingdom came a Greek, or Hellenistic culture and language that tied the people together (hence the NT is written in Greek).

There were certain cities that were chosen as colonies, or strongholds of Greek culture and learning. Antioch was one of those cities. To the Jews, Hellenists were those people who were hard to figure out.

Language – Jews spoke an eastern language that flowed from the back of the book to the front, from the right side of the page to the left. Hellenists spoke a western language that flowed from the front of the book to the back, from the left side of the page to the right.

Beliefs – Jews believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Hellenists believed in Zeus, Hermes, and Artemis. Jews believed in one God.  Hellenists had a “coatrack” of gods; always room for one more mythological character with wings.

Worldviews – Jews thought in cyclical, existential terms; they sought after signs, the “Wow factor.” Hellenists thought in linear terms; they sought after wisdom, the “Sensible factor.”

Authority – The Jews were the refugees on the run; everything they owned was portable. The Hellenists were settled, comfortable in their culture. But both were under the rule of the Romans, so they had that in common.

In other words, the Jews and Hellenists were a cultural train wreck waiting to happen. How would a church minister?
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It was only a matter of time before they would get into a tussle of confusion over customs, beliefs, and words. In other words, this was a huge hurdle to cross. This would be like me trying to preach Jesus to a Buddhist King from Cambodia who happened to know some English.

But something impelled a few courageous believers to jump the cultural and class hurdle; something empowered them to keep the story unfolding such that an intercultural church with a mission-vision could sprout up in the heart of that Greek colonial city ruled by Romans.

home groupWhat gave them the initiative to do that? Or to relate it practically, what could motivate and strengthen us to do the same? I mean, we are wired to prefer our own kind of music, food and dress. We like our schedules, our politics, our entertainment. And we prefer being around people who share our likes and dislike our dislikes! What reasons could be strong enough to push “Play” in our lives, and in our church, to keep the story rolling?

 Up next:   Rewind – Transformation of mind and heart

Read the full story here.

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“Fast Forward” – A dynamic, intercultural church

Cross cultures with love

Let’s pick up on our story of how a church gets off of “Pause.”

What was ahead in the adventure story of the Antioch church? So many people began following Jesus at Antioch that the news spread down to Jerusalem. The bigwigs at Jerusalem wanted to check it out, so they tapped a trusted elder named Barnabas to hop on up to Antioch and find out what was happening in the church there.

Barnabas determined that it was the real thing; that the Holy Spirit was the instigator of it all. So much so that his weekend investigation turned into an entire year of training, helped along by a young apostle named Paul. A drought made the headlines and the church responded not by throwing its hands up helplessly but by taking a big offering and sending the proceeds down to Jerusalem to help feed the hungry.

Fast forward a bit further and you see a church well established with a mature elder board. diverse handsInteresting thing about that elder board: it is ethnically and economically diverse.

  • Barnabas; (Acts 4:36) “son of encouragement”; priestly tribe,
  • Cyprus; landowner
  • Simeon who was called Niger; Jewish name, apparently with nickname (Latin) meaning “black.” Child of mixed marriage? (Jewish father, African mother?)
  • Lucius of Cyrene; Roman name (upbringing) from city in Libya (No.African)
  • Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch; possibly foster-brother; Jewish name; associated with a despised, despotic ruling family; exposed to wealth.
  • Saul; well educated Jewish lawyer. Vicious persecutor of the church; excellent teacher
 It was a dynamic, intercultural church. It had a staff that only the resurrected Christ could recruit and keep unified.

People were getting turned around on a dime by the resurrected Jesus. Money was flowing in to help the poor and hungry. Elders of different ethnicities were praying together with fasting; they were hearing the voice of God. This was one happening place.

Consider! Most churches are poised to become places that only the Spirit of God can imagine! If only they weren’t stuck on Pause.

Read the rest of the story…..“Play” – Jump cultural hurdles for Christ
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Has your church hit the pause button?

Cross cultures with love

Have you ever been guest in a home watching a movie on DVD, and the doorbell rings. The host gets up to answer it, and hits “Pause.” He comes back and starts the movie only to get a call on the phone; and he hits “Pause” again!  Later its up for a snack, and then a restroom break. Oh, did I forget to feed the dog?   It can take 4 hours to watch a 2 hour movie! Pausing can be a pain. Because Pause is the opposite pause playof progress.

Did you ever consider that God may get tired of us hitting the Pause button?

Every church is an unfolding story of adventure. Your story is a drama of good against evil, a damsel in distress with a handsome Prince ready to rescue. Yours is a story of coming into sync with God’s purpose for you, picking up the Spirit’s wind in your sails and breezing through the crisp ocean air!!

But in my work with churches across the country, I have discovered that the vast majority of churches, some say over 90%, have hit the Pause button, all at the very same place. Has your church done the same? Have you stopped the action just as the hand of the Lord is about to favor you! Would you like to know where the story is paused? I can give you chapter and verse

Acts 11:19.  “Now those who were scattered after the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word to no one but the Jews only.” PAUSE !.

The message of Christ, and the good deeds of Christ, were spreading outward from Jerusalem. As the believers traveled, they shared the story of Jesus with people wherever they went. And they did this in the most natural way—they talked to people like themselves. Jews talked to Jews. Well, that’s great. God loves the Jewish people, and they needed to hear about their Messiah. But there was much more to the story than the Jews.

Read all about it here.

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A church that only the Spirit could imagine

Cross cultures with love, Our Vision & Mission, , , ,

Interesting thing about the elder board at Antioch church: it was ethnically and economically diverse.

  • Barnabas; (Acts 4:36) “son of encouragement”; priestly tribe,  Cyprus; landowner
  • Simeon who was called Niger; Jewish name, apparently with nickname (Latin) meaning “black.” Child of mixed marriage? (Jewish father, African mother?)
  • Lucius of Cyrene; Roman name (upbringing) from city in Libya (No.African)
  • Manaen who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch; possibly foster-brother; Jewish name; associated with a despised, despotic ruling family; exposed to wealth.
  • Saul; well educated Jewish lawyer. Vicious persecutor of the church; excellent teacher

In other words, the Antioch church became a church that only the Spirit of God could have imagined!  For the whole story and what we can learn from it, click here.

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S.A.N.T.A. approach to cross-cultural friendship

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Here is a simple, easy-to-remember approach to making a friend with someone of another culture.

S = smile

A smile is the international way to show friendliness. It is your best first step. Best to keep your smiling man to man, woman to woman, so you don’t miscommunicate.

A = appreciate

Say something appreciative about the person, such as:

  • I’m glad we are neighbors.
  • It is great to see your family getting together
  • That shirt/dress is beautiful. Is it from your culture?
N = name

Everyone loves to be known by their name. When appropriate, ask and remember the name of your new friend. If it is difficult, resist the urge to shorten it. Say, “I love your name and want to remember it. Could you say it again (or spell it)?” Don’t be afraid to write it down; that shows you really mean what you say. Remember the name for the next times you meet.

T = tea

Sitting and chatting over a simple cup of tea or coffee, with a biscuit, is an important step in deepening a friendship. Do this often, preferably in your home or apartment, although a neutral cafe is okay. Home hospitality invites your friend into your space, which helps build trust. If a visitor of another culture comes to your door, invite them in without question (not applicable to sales people necessarily).

A = ask

What do you talk about over tea? Ask your new friend to tell you about him/her self. There is an interesting story to hear. Do this more than once, for there is much to learn. You might ask:

  • Where is home for you, and how are things there?
  • What was your experience in coming to this country?
  • What are your favorite traditions in your culture?
  • How has this country been different than you expected?
  • What do you hope to accomplish in coming years?

I encourage you to repeat the S.A.N.T.A. approach many times with your new friend. Each time you will deepen your friendship. In time you will be able to share your story. Showing interest in this way is so rare that you will be invited into your friend’s life and network. You will be amazed at how fulfilling this can be.

–Robert Rasmussen, NEAR FRONTIERS Executive Director

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Pastors who become missionaries

Cross cultures with love, Our Vision & Mission, ,

I just spent a couple hours with a missionary who, like me, served for many years as a pastor. It dawned on me that God often births in the heart of pastors the desire to move into the mission world.

city burbsMany pastors stay in the pastorate while serving actively and regularly in overseas ministry. They will travel once or twice a year to do training, visit missionaries, or even start ministries in partnership with national believers. When I was pastoring, I participated in trips to Native American reservations in Arizona, and went with one of our missionaries to a remote tribe in Mexico where he had been working on a translation of the gospel of Luke. I always returned with a fresh view of the congregation I was shepherding.

At times God leads a pastor to leave the shepherding role and launch out on mission, fueled by an apostolic passion to bring the kingdom to new areas. There are many ways that the pastorate helps prepare one for doing so. In my case, I felt my experience as a pastor for eight years was a good foundation for providing training for East African pastors. Since returning to the States, I have become acquainted with an excellent organization called Global Training Network, which consists primarily of experienced pastors who now travel to different countries to offer Biblical and practical training.

Making the change from the pastorate to mission work has its challenges. Perhaps the one I felt most keenly at first was role deprivation. As a pastor I was the center of the congregation (well, other than Jesus). Decisions, ideas, even criticism all came my way!  When I moved into missions, it required that I start from scratch and learn about culture and language. Learning a new language means feeling inept and childish. It is humbling. You have to do it out of obedience to God and love for the people you have come to serve.

villageBut on the positive side, having one or more congregations that love you as their pastor becomes a solid foundation for prayer and financial support. It was easier for me to resign from the congregation I loved because I was answering a call to a different kind of ministry rather than leaving them for another church. Many of my church members are still partners in my mission work now.

If you are a pastor who wonders if God wants to use you in missions (or if you are a church member who wants to offer your pastor for an exotic post far away!), here are a few suggestions:

  1. If you are married, it is essential that your spouse shares the mission journey with you. Discuss and pray together about how God may be leading. In my case, our two daughters were three and five years old when my wife and I began praying about a transition, so clearly the change was going to impact my wife in a big way. To her credit, she came to Kenya with me having never traveled further than Tijuana.
  2. Consider the kind of ministry you could see yourself doing. Prayerfully discern how God has wired you. Are you a teacher, or administrator. Are you a writer, or hands-on discipler. Begin praying about organizations that might be a good fit for you. Chances are you will find yourself fitting in with an organization you already know about. But there is also a chance that God will ask you to do something you would never have dreamed.
  3. Make an honest assessment of your aptitude as an individual and as a family. In my case, I did not feel the best place for us would be in an extremely remote village, nor in a restricted access country. I felt we would be better where there was a local school, medical help, and colleagues we could team up with. A genuine call of God will not split a family apart. If God has not outfitted your family for the rigors of mission, you need to find ways to participate individually while keeping your home base in the pastorate.
  4. Further assess the degree to which you are able to say goodbye to the lifestyle you have now. All disciples are called to deny self for Christ, and missions offers the opportunity to do so many times over. There are a lot of goodbyes in mission work, not just when you first leave. You will make friends in your host country, some of whom will leave, and some of whom you will leave behind. God gives grace for these departures, but they are tough. Your kids will be enriched by the life, but they will have to say goodbye to their friends at regular intervals.
  5. Are you a learner? This is difficult after many years of being a leader and teacher. But to be an effective missionary who connects with the people of your host nation you must take the role of the servant. I have seen some pastors-turned-missionaries who should have stayed home, because they came with a haughty attitude. Do you love cultures, appreciate different foods and smells? Can you live in housing that is unusual to you? In other words, do you see this as adventure?

I leave you with this. All the epistles of Paul were missionary letters, so the connection between pastoring and missions is the DNA embedded in the New Testament. So prayerfully consider how (not if) God wants you to be involved. If you know what Near Frontiers is about, you know that there is plenty of mission to do right here in our country. The diaspora makes it natural, and in my view imperative, that pastors be mission-minded and mission-engaged. But we need workers who will pray about pulling up stakes and moving to unresourced areas. Let’s get out there!

Photo credits: commons.wikimedia.org

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Intercultural unity, good for church health

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Intercultural unity — when people of different cultures fellowship deeply together in unity — is good for the health of the Christian community. Let me share some of my thinking:

  • Intercultural unity can expose unhealthy ways in which our culture can become one and the same with our faith — as if there is no other valid way of worship that pleases God other than our way.
  • Intercultural unity can expose ethnocentrism, a cultural arrogance that assumes our way is the right way.
  • Intercultural unity can expose syncretism, the merging of absolute truth with optional cultural practices.

This is what the Jerusalem Council (in Acts 15) accomplished. The Jewish leaders, under direction of the Holy Spirit an at the uncomfortable assistance of those ministering to Gentiles, realized that their customs were not essential for pleasing God.

When you think of all that the Jewish leaders laid down at the foot of the cross, and what little they retained, you have to admire their sacrificial obedience. But what a benefit for the kingdom of God! Their gracious conclusion (Acts 15:28-29) unleashed exponential growth among the Gentiles for centuries to come.

jerusalem councilBut the tipping point had to come. The weight of Gentile acceptance of the gospel had to, at some point, overpower culturally Jewish dominance of the Way. So it was to their credit that the pillars of the Jerusalem church saw the inevitability of change and cooperated with the Spirit’s new wine skins.

Such changes have continually happened ever since, and in our day the rising tide of immigration is pressuring the dominant church to yield. If leaders will take a lesson from Peter and James, we will see what the Spirit is doing in our generation, one in which no ethnic group will hold a majority, one in which people from all nations now call the U.S. home.festival

Like the founding Jewish apostles, we can view this as an opportunity to be seized. Rather than retrenching in the fortress of cultural Christianity, we can take an honest look at our syncretism and take gradual but courageous steps to pare down the things that are “essential” and welcome into the fold a broad spectrum of expressions of following Jesus.

When people of different cultures fellowship deeply together in unity, the health of the church can improve
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Love your neighbor

Cross cultures with love, Treks

We appreciate this cool article published by our mother agency, One Challenge.

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22: 37-40

Near FrontiersAs the world seems to become more dangerous and the diversity in the United States grows, Jesus’ commandment takes on new meaning. The nations are coming to us. Near Frontiers, a subsidiary of One Challenge, believes today is an unprecedented time in missions, where the once unreachable are now next door. Find out more at: http://www.nearfrontiers.org

Divine Appointments

Near Frontiers’ newest member Kim* works among international students and Muslims in her community. In the city where she lives, there are Iraqis, Saudis, Turks, Indonesians, Pakistanis, Kurds, Jordanians, Iranians, Egyptians, and Chinese. These are all places where publically a Western woman could have little to no influence.

Near Frontiers

The Lord is giving Kim opportunity to spread the gospel to these peoples in her U.S. neighborhood. She befriends Muslims who have never met a Believer. She shares Jesus with men and their families over dinner. She celebrates with Iraqi women and invited an Algerian woman stay in her home.

She studied the Bible with a woman from Iran, who recently stepped into God’s Kingdom. “It’s so awesome to see her so tender to God’s word and hearing of her praying at meals in front of her unbelieving husband. And hearing of his heart softening too,” Kim says.

God is at work!

“God has called me to step out of my safe boat like Peter and trust Him to sustain me. I love meeting Muslims from other countries and sharing the love of Jesus with them,” Kim says.

Lives can be transformed over dinner, in an airport, at a party. All it takes is to step out and “love your neighbor as yourself” while keeping your focus fixed on the Savior.

Pray with One Challenge

  • Pray for Kim and her husband as they minister in the international community in which they live.
  • Pray for opportunities for One Challenge workers to witness to Muslims both near and far.
  • Pray for new believers, in particular from a Muslim background, as they continue to grow in their faith and often come up against much opposition and oppression in their daily lives.

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Diaspora Consultation in South Carolina

Treks, , ,

I was privileged to speak recently at a Diaspora Mission Consultation in Columbia, South Carolina.  “What in the world is that?”  The idea was to encourage unity among Christians across cultural and denominational lines. For what purpose?  To encourage all of us to reach out beyond our own cultural groups to share the love of Christ with all others.

It was a great time, and included stories from different ethnic communities about how God is at work.  It is a great encouragement to see the breadth of the body of Christ, and be reminded that God is at work among all the nations of the earth, including those whom He is bringing here to America.

diaspora group

Mehari Korcho, who gathered the planning team that organized the event, will serve as our intern staff this year. It is a privilege to have him on our staff. Mehari challenged leaders to repent of only looking after their own group, based on his own journey in which God led him to repent of only ministering to Ethiopians. What a strong word for us today!

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