A Look Inside Luke's Head

This is just a glimpse into my (Luke’s) head - the "Llama's Logic" at it's finest.  I wrote what follows in my journal during my time in Ethiopia learning about Sports Friends.

I don’t know how anybody could come see this ministry and not be profoundly affected.  We visited three churches today, all of which were started through Sports Friends, all of which are in otherwise 100% M_slim areas, and all of which were growing, training leaders, and changing lives.  Denomination doesn’t matter.  Age doesn’t matter.  Building doesn’t matter.  God matters.  These churches exist for the glory of God and are actively and sacrificially evangelizing.  Visiting these churches, even briefly, was both humbling and encouraging, and I find myself deeply convicted of apathy.  I keep asking myself,

WHEN DID I LOSE SIGHT OF MY FIRST LOVE?

I was drawn to missions out of a confidence of God’s calling in my life.  Unlike so many things in my life now, I didn’t resist this calling.  I understood God’s amazing act of grace in my life, and I desperately wanted the world to experience His grace, too.  I was deeply, passionately in love with Christ.  But when did this raging fire dim to a flickering candle?  When did I become comfortable in simply being a missionary in title, but doing so little to actually tell others about Christ?

WHEN DID MY LOVE GROW COLD?

As I sit on the veranda of the beach house at Camp Langano, I look up and read

Be still and know that

I AM GOD

-Psalm 46:10

A simple verse, and one that I have known for years.  But even now it is exactly what I needed to read.  I feel so much turmoil in my life and ministry right now, and I am so excited to go back and see what God does with this experience.  I keep thinking of more and different ways to bring all I’ve learned here to the field in Zambia.  Strategies repeatedly come to mind.  Logistics.  Plans.  But I need to always remember that God is God, and He is in control.  So, we may go back and see nothing happen in Zambia; or, we can go back and see lives changed for Christ.  Either way, He is truly and absolutely in control.  I just get to participate in the great things He is doing.

So I look forward to getting back to Zambia.  I look forward to training church leaders to actually care about the spiritual state of the world and actually do something about it.  I look forward to being a part of an interdenominational church planting movement among the “reached” and the unreached alike.  I look forward to seeing God change lives.  I look forward to seeing the face and focus of missions change so that we see incarnational missionaries passionately and intentionally sharing the gospel.  That’s what is important.  When did mission strategy become more important than the gospel message?  When did the status quo become more important than radical change for Christ?  When did comfort become more important than Christ?  When did church polity become more important than gospel ministry?  In essence,

WHEN DID I BECOME MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHRIST?

A Look Ahead - Changes

If you read my last post, you’ll see that my time in Ethiopia was amazing and it gave us a lot to think and pray about now that I’m back.  Many of you have been asking what all this means for us and our ministry here in Zambia.  And what’s this talk about going to Thailand?  Well, keep reading…

First of all, as of right now we are NOT MOVING.  I wanted to say that up front because, well, you will probably see news about me (Luke) doing a lot of traveling in the months to come.  So don’t freak.  We’re not leaving.

That said, the months ahead are going to involve a great deal of changes as we look at incorporating Sports Friends into the ministry efforts of SIM Zambia.  I will be more or less coordinating all this on the Zambia side, working closely with the international trainers and developers as we start to share the vision with Zambian church leaders.  These initial stages involve Skype conference calls (woohoo for technology!), some travel within Zambia to meet with SIM Zambia leadership, and even a few more international trips, including one to Thailand in January.

 

What about Tiffany?  And what about Lusa?  While these new responsibilities will keep me quite busy and away from Lusa, I am still available to them as needed.  Tiffany, however, will continue working there, building relationships with the handful of volunteers, working directly with Regina (the Lusa administrator), and teaching budgeting and nutrition lessons.  Through time her role there may diminish, but not yet.

Hopefully this answered some of your questions.

So, how can you help out?  I’m glad you asked!

•  Please be praying for us during the days ahead, as I have a great deal of preliminary work to get done.  Pray for stamina and focus.
• Please pray for our upcoming trip to Thailand, that we may get to and from safely and that our time there may be fruitful and enlightening
• Please pray for the people of Zambia, that their hearts might be open and receptive to the Gospel
• Please pray that the funds come into our ministry account to cover the costs of the trip to Thailand and another potential training trip to Ethiopia in April (more on that one later)

 Thank you all!  You are more of a blessing to us than you will ever know!

A Look Back - Ethiopia

Many of you have been asking about my recent trip to Ethiopia.  How was my trip?  What did I learn?  What does this mean for our future ministry?  How was the food?

I just want to say that, no matter how hard I try, I will never be able to fully explain or describe how much I learned during and grew from this trip.  Words just won’t do it justice.  But, I guess I’ll try.

For those who don’t know, I went to Ethiopia from 30^th November to 10^th December of this year to visit Sports Friends, a sports-based ministry of SIM.  The program was started in Ethiopia ten years ago and has since spread to Kenya, Thailand, and Nigeria, and now they are looking to expand further into Malawi, Peru, and Zambia.  And that’s where I come in.

Many of you have kept up with my frustrations since arriving in Zambia a year ago.  After beginning our ministry at Lusa in May, we have found less and less for me to do there.  Almost all of the limited number of community volunteers are female, so Tiffany has been able to build some strong relationships while I just sit on the sidelines.  We’ve seen the feeding program for the children improve to provide weekly meals, but usually the food is cooked by the women while the kids are in class, and so again I just sit around.  I tried to start a Bible curriculum for the school, but the teachers would only occasionally teach it. 

During all this, I would continue to play with the idea of starting a sports ministry here in Solwezi.  Regularly I would brainstorm with Tiffany ideas on what a sports ministry would look like here.  How often would we meet?  For how long?  Would we incorporate a Bible study?  Before we play?  After we play?  How many leaders would I need?  Our list of questions grew and grew, and we prayed and prayed.

Then, one day, seemingly out of the blue, all those prayers seemed to be answered.  I received an email from the SIM Zambia director asking if I was interested in traveling to Ethiopia to learn more about Sports Friends.  My gut response was to jump on board right away, but I told him that Tiffany and I would pray about it before I gave him an answer.  So we did.  And I went.

And I am so glad I did.

While in Ethiopia, I had a chance to meet with a handful of the almost 150 SIM missionaries serving in that country.  I learned about their organizational structure, their philosophy of ministry, and what God is doing through them among the people of Ethiopia.

I had a chance to meet with several leaders from Ethiopia Kale Heywet Church, the largest evangelical denomination in Ethiopia, boasting around 8 million members.  I learned that a fully self-governed, self-supported, and self-propagating church in Africa is more than just a dream – it’s a reality.  I learned how this church was actively sending missionaries to other parts of the world, including areas where Western missionaries are not allowed entry.

And I had the chance to visit with Sports Friends Ethiopia leaders and learn from them.  I learned that Sports Friends is more than “just” a sports ministry.  It’s more than playing games so that young people come to church.  It’s more than establishing a fun environment where people feel safe and can have fun.  It’s so much more than all that.

Sports Friends is changing lives.

We visited a church that started when a 12 year old Muslim boy came to Christ through Sports Friends.  This boy’s life changed, and soon his family began asking questions before ultimately placing their faith in Christ as well.  This church now has close to 80 members, provides 2 Sports Friends teams, and is planting churches in the Muslim community around it.

We met a young man who went through the program and is now the only believer in his family of 50.  Ostracized by his parents, this man is now a church leader in a local “mother church” that is actively planting churches in the community, including the one mentioned above.

We met another young man who was addicted to drugs and alcohol until he came to Christ through Sports Friends.  He is now an active participant in the ministry, coaching a team and praying that he can impact more youth for Christ.

I could go on and on.

But what makes this program so different from other sports ministries?  Not being the foremost expert in this area, I would attribute it to the emphasis on character building and leadership development.  Sports is the vehicle by which contact is made and relationships are built, but it is by no means the focus of the ministry.  Changed lives through the power of the Gospel is key.  Church leaders are trained as coaches, the youth are invested in, future leaders are developed, and growth is undeniably seen.

Empowering leaders.  Strengthening churches.  Changing lives.

Sports Friends in a nutshell (though this by no means does it justice).  My next post, whenever I get to it, is going to look at what all this means for our ministry here in Zambia.

Oh, to have a time machine...

The remnants after Jungle's "dinner"

The other night, Tiffany and I returned home from dinner with friends to find that Jungle had eaten The Rainmaker.  I guess I wasn’t supposed to be reading that book right now after all.  So, I picked up a small book I received in Ethiopia called An Indigenous Church in Action, by Alfred G. Roke.  Not really the most compelling title, but after reading the first three pages, I’m hooked.  Below are a few excerpts from the book, along with a comment or two from me.  Enjoy, and let me know your thoughts!

“This was, and is, a truly indigenous church, where the principles of self-support, self-government, and self-propagation were adopted, by the Spirit’s leading, right from the outset.  There is a world of difference between this method of working, and the usual method of waiting to hand over responsibility to the native church, until in the opinion of the foreign missionary it is sufficiently mature for this to be done.  An unbiased reading of the New Testament will convince that the former method, the truly indigenous method, is God’s way of evangelizing the world.”

~A.L. Harris, in his foreword dated January 1^st, 1938

So, what about when this opportunity for planting an indigenous church from the start is already long gone?  Like, 100 years gone?

The book itself begins:

“The objective of all true missionary effort is the world-wide propagation of the Christian faith; not the Christianizing of the whole world, but its evangelization.”

~p. 7

In other words, the primary objective is spreading the Gospel, NOT Christian religion in its various forms and practices.

“We aim not at bringing the whole world to Christ, but at the bringing of Christ to the whole world.  The universal objective therefore must be the evangelization of every people.  The local objective, and result of the former, is the planting of a church.  Neither objective is possible without God, but both are with Him.”

~p. 7

Again, evangelism is paramount, and the natural outworking of evangelism is the planting of a church.  This church, however, need not look, sound, or feel like the missionary’s concept of church, but rather reflect how the indigenous believers come to express their faith in their Savior.

Okay, last one for now:

“Any activity, by whatever name it may be called, if it does not soundly contribute towards the missionary objective, must sooner or later be acknowledged as unsatisfactory.  Much work has begun in all sincerity, and those who today are called upon to carry it on, feel it is in vain.  In many cases the younger missionary is faced with the possible surrender of the vision that carried him to the field, and is in danger of settling down into an old established rut which cannot bring him or his coworkers any nearer the great objective.  A candid examination of the facts regarding a great deal of present day missionary work will quickly prove that all is not right.”

Two quick thoughts.  First, this was written in 1937, yet we still face these same issues today.  Second, and I will conclude with this, the writer is NOT saying that community aide programs such as schools and hospitals are bad.  The preceding paragraph actually describes them as outworkings of ministry.  But, if these programs, no matter how sincere they are, stand in the missionary’s way of sharing the Gospel, then there is a problem.  If this problem is allowed to persist for many years, and gets passed from one generation of missionary to the next so that the new missionaries to the field are forced to push aside the goal of evangelization in order to maintain the tradition of help over the Gospel, something has gone terribly wrong.  This issue cannot be allowed to continue.  Change must take place.  So I ask,

WHEN DID MY WORK BECOME MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHRIST’S WORK?

Access to the Father

“Because you are close to God, because of your skin.”

I stopped by the post office to check our mail this morning and one of my favorite security guards greeted me joyfully. He told me he thought I would be at church, which normally I would on a Sunday, but our church had a special Christmas event last night and therefore cancelled church this morning. Anyway, he said that they (he and another man with him) unfortunately couldn’t go to church because they were securing things. So, they read the Bible together and pray. (Yay for them, right?) He said they pray to God to protect them, that they won’t be endangered. Then he said that only God and I can protect them.

Me? How can I protect them? I responded: “Only God can protect you from danger – I can’t protect you!”

And that’s when he said it. That I could protect them through my prayers to God, because God will listen to me because of my skin color; as if having white skin is a prerequisite to having a close relationship with the Lord.

Is this what is being taught? Is it a belief that is widely held by our Zambian brothers and sisters? I find myself wondering if it is a remnant of colonialism or if it’s the result of false doctrine (or both). Some churches in South Africa and elsewhere teach that the black Africans are descendents of Ham, father of Canaan. After Noah awakes from his drunkenness In Genesis 9:25-27, it says,

“He said, ‘Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.’ He also said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend the territory of Japheth; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be his slave.’”

The idea in the doctrine is that the black Africans are an inferior race, subject to slavery. It’s the same theology that had so many Civil War era Americans convinced that slavery was morally and spiritually acceptable.

As Luke prepared to go to Ethiopia, a European man told us that in Ethiopia, the people don’t look at themselves as inferior to whites, making it much easier to have mutual friendships and mutual working relationships. In contrast, it is very difficult to have strong mutual relationships with our Zambian brothers and sisters. Despite our sin, our shortcomings, and our brokenness, we are still viewed as “superior.” Perhaps that is why there is one church here absolutely convinced that they need an American pastor (they really want Luke) to grow. Perhaps this is why children seem to take great pride in greeting a muzungu (white person) and receiving a response. Maybe this is why when I pick something up off a shelf in Shoprite, others around me immediately look at the same thing in the hope of imitating my selection and becoming just a little more like me.

But regardless of the whys and hows, it’s wrong. I told my friend this morning that he is my brother. He has the same access to God that I do, and the Lord listens to his prayers. In Revelation 7:9 it says,

“After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.”

It doesn’t say that the Americans or Europeans will be in front – in the cushy seats – VIP seating. It doesn’t say that the Zambians will be sweeping the floors or asking others to pray on their behalf. It says we will all be standing before the throne of God and the Lamb.

We are all sinners – all guilty before God until the price has been paid for our sin. And through the death of Christ on the cross, it has. One death for all mankind; not proportioned out based on our race or the intensity of our sin. We are all disobedient; and we all have access to redemption.

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galations 3:8

I pray that I encouraged my dear brother this morning. After all, that’s what he is – my brother. We share a common Father, and have equal access to that Father. And as he sits praying and reading his Bible and wishing he were at church, I am humbled that he would think of me (running a few errands on a Sunday morning), as greater in the Kingdom of God. And I am forever grateful that our salvation is not through our actions, but only through Christ.