Misappropriation

If you have a big blank space where a life-purpose should be, you should seriously consider getting involved in Chinese missions. Better yet, if you have a you-shaped blob where a life-purpose should be, you should consider getting involved.

‘Don’t I need to be called?’

Right. You need a special call from God to share the Gospel with the lost of China. But you don’t need a special call to stay home, be a computer technician, make money, buy an iPhone, and take a vacation to Florida every year. Not that I’m against any of those things (anybody wants to send me an iPhone, I will send you my address!) – my point is, one life is clearly the more comfortable of the two. So why do we think that the life of luxury is by default God’s will?

Because it’s available to us, I imagine. So it must be God’s will, we reason. Why would he put me in a country where I could make six figures a year unless it was his will that I do so? There’s more than one way to read that evidence, though. A CEO of a large corporation could see that he has the authority over and access to large amounts of money. But it would be irresponsible (criminal!) for him to assume that the money is there for him and his comfort.

One of the great sins of Western Christianity: misappropriation of funds. Of blessings. Of manpower.

The truth is, every one of us is spending our lives, our money, and our ability on a call, on a life-purpose. There really are no blank spaces where a life-purpose should be. If you can’t state your life-purpose on demand, I’ve got some bad news. It’s highly likely your life-purpose is your own pleasure. You are misappropriating God’s gifts; you are wasting your life.

What to do? Spend some time alone with God. List out for him all the blessings that he’s dumped in your lap. Then beg him to tell you why he chose to give you so much. Ask him for the purpose.

*note – I’m using ‘life-purpose’ here as differentiated from your ‘purpose.’ It is entirely likely that God has purposes for your life that you couldn’t understand or dream of, and which will only reveal themselves after many years of apparent randomness (Gen. 50:20). What I mean is some goal, principle, or determination that you can understand that guides you through all the junk that you can’t understand (the course – Ac. 20:24).

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Worth-a-while Short-Term Missions

The interns have been here for a week now, and they have done a fantastic job so far. They’ve been working like crazy – please pray they don’t break down before the end of the six weeks! Having them here has made me think more about the point of short-term mission trips. Not really sure how long is supposed to count as ’short-term.’ I guess if it’s years in length, it’s not really accurate to call it a ‘trip’ anymore. Regardless of the time, missions-with-a-return-ticket are vital exercises for churches serious about the Great Commission.

Most foundational, short-term missions are burden-enlargers. If you find your soul largely unaffected by a world lost in darkness, the sight of the nations just may move you with compassion. If you’re recruiting for a trip, don’t just target those with a burden for missions – invite the indifferent. This is kind of annoying, because you’ll have to include things in the schedule that you may think are trivial just to add some attraction. But there’s no telling how many missionaries serving today were largely indifferent to the need before they saw it.

The second big purpose is education – learning about the field, its needs, and a strategy for impact. This means pre-trip training should include ‘learning to ask questions.’ The people that come on trips with a learning mentality will be powerful spreaders of the burden when they return. This is one of the reasons why I have a real problem with trips (English-teaching trips are a common culprit) that try to scare everyone to death. Telling them that sharing the Gospel is dangerous, teaching them to speak and write in code, keeping them out of house churches, etc. These trips usually do more harm than good. Because these people all go home and perpetuate these false ideas.

Lastly, mission trips are there to help. Some people won’t like it that this is last. Some people won’t like it that it’s called ‘help.’ But let’s be honest for a second. If you don’t speak the language of the country you’re going to, what do you think you’re really going to accomplish? If you’re doing short-term work completely disconnected from a long-term work, what do you think is going to happen after you take off?

Popular short-term missions work include teaching English, Vacation Bible Schools, youth camps, evangelistic crusades, medical clinics, and building projects. These things are all great, but none of them should be ends in themselves. Take building trips for example: you fly over to some impoverished nation to build them something. But your plane ticket costs like a year’s wage in that nation! You’re totaled before you get there! Doesn’t mean I’m against the trip at all! That’s why this is only the last purpose. If the trip also gives you a burden and an education, I’m all for it.

Here’s a definition of ‘help’: furthering a long-term missionary’s goals. Find out where the missionary is going, then find out how you can help him get there. All the trips listed above can be fantastic ‘further-ers.’ Your help may even include highly specialized skills that your team possesses. Some missions teams are just looking for a stage to put on their own show. We’ve been contacted by youth groups that want to come and do Bible schools, students that want to come teach English, etc. That’s all fine, but it’s cart before the horse.

When I was little, I wanted to help my dad draw engineering schematics. If he had let me go crazy with my crayons, though, ‘help’ would be the opposite of what I accomplished! Help is awesome – just make sure it’s really help!

What does this mean for you, O planner of trips? Organize your trip and training around these three goals. Count your trip a success when these happen. Search for a ministry that facilitates these goals.

And you, O short-termer-turned-long-termer? Realize that there’s a difference between short-term effective and long-term effective. Just because you had a good time doing something on a month-long missions trip, does not mean that that’s a reasonable model for a lifelong ministry! Teaching English as a supplement to a church-planting ministry can be an awesome help. Teaching English as an independent, long-term ministry is not a good plan.

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Who Cares About Potential?

We’ve got four interns arriving today. They missed their domestic flight last night, so they’ve now been traveling for about 40 hours. I’m really excited about these guys and girls coming – there’s a lot of places where they can plug in and be used. I’ll tell you one thing that I’m not interested in at all, though – their ‘potential.’

Not entirely sure why we do it, but it seems that people in ministry have a soft spot in their hearts for people with ‘potential.’ What is ‘potential’? The teen with natural leadership ability, the businessman with heavy pockets, the Bible
college student with a great pulpit presence. It’s what amounts to unused gifts. And the pastor/missionary/youth worker involved says something like ‘If he’d just…, then he could do something great.’ It’s like walking into an attic full of dusty old furniture and seeing the possibility for an antique store. The problem with this idea is that to start an antique store, you actually need old furniture. What do you actually need to be used by God?

The truth is, the Bible reveals a God that is remarkably unconcerned with raw material. He is prone to apparent whimsical (certainly not meritocratic) selection of servants and endows those he chooses with unnatural, spiritual gifts. Which means that a person’s natural gifts and abilities barely register on God’s scales. So why do they register so high for us?

In physics (as I understand it, anyway – I flunked it in high school), potential energy is related to an object’s position. If a rock is sitting on top of a mountain, it’s got high potential energy. Potential energy is part of what pulls it down! If it wants to go any higher, it will require kinetic exertion by an outside force. I’m afraid that ‘potential’ is often just the optimist’s word for ‘possibility.’ It’s possible that this teen will not be a loser. It’s possible that this wealthy person will learn to be generous. But if you want to talk about latent potential, just like the rock perched atop the mountain, they both only have the potential to plummet. Left to themselves, that’s all they’ve got! Blast that depravity!

But wait, you say, do their gifts count for nothing? Can’t God work in their lives and make use of the unused? Certainly, but if that’s the case, why talk about the people’s potential at all? It’s far more accurate to say that God has the potential to use anyone. But if ‘anyone,’ why are you so entranced by the gifts of some? Semantics? Don’t think so…

Our discerning eyes have a tendency to isolate the high-potential people. And those are the people we want to spend our time with. They’re the people that we naturally believe in. They’re the ones we want to support. Meanwhile, some with lower potential are overlooked. I personally have a tendency to first filter out everyone that doesn’t have ‘potential,’ then look among the leftovers for the people that would be willing to serve God. Forgetting, of course, that God is hardly impressed by ‘natural leadership ability’ or ‘a warm personality.’ Forgetting also that I personally have all the potential of sour milk. It might be a worthy exercise for all of us to sit down with the Scriptures and find out who it is that God delights to use, and then search for those characteristics in the people we lead. Otherwise, we’ll probably all continue spending time with the wrong people.

Who do you know with ‘potential’? Who do you always say, ‘if he would just…, then he could do something great’? Why are you so drawn to that person’s potential? How does that affect the way he or she is treated in your ministry? Is it possible that someone else could be passed over because they’re lacking in the ‘potential’ department? Do I really believe God can use anyone, regardless of their potential, or is that grace only for me?

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Of Point Guards and Church-Planters

Are foreigners needed in church-planting roles in mainland China?

Big implications for that question. Most foreign full-time Christian workers here are banking on a negative answer. Start a coffee-shop for evangelism, have a training conference for pastors, or build an English school for discipleship – these are the basic building blocks of most plans to ‘impact’ China. The assumption is, the Chinese can build better churches than we can, so why get involved in that part of the process? That’s the really illegal thing anyway (foreigners building churches), so why not avoid that altogether?

Let’s slow down a second before you get really angry. I am all for all of those ministries I just mentioned (with some asterisks). And I definitely believe that the Chinese can build better churches than we can – with one BIG asterisk: fully-trained Chinese men can build better. If you have a shortage of people in this category, you will find churches aplenty, but few that you’d want to go to if they were in America.

Chinese basketball provides a suitable analogy. China is now producing some excellent players. They’ve been interested for a generation now, and there’s some real talent here. But much to their chagrin, they have yet to make much of an international showing (see their recent Olympic performance). The problem is simple – no strong point guards. One article I read after the Olympics said – ‘a billion Chinese people, and not a point guard among ‘em.’ Of course, every time they play, they’ve got a point guard. Someone who’s filling the spot. But he’s not excelling there.

Does China have pastors? Sure. Are there enough? Not by a long shot. Are they well-trained, or are they filling the spot? No sense in my answering; most of you probably won’t believe me anyway. But I can tell you about pastors I’ve met that are frustrated and struggling. This is the fulcrum – the training of the leaders is going to determine what brand of Christianity will be seen in the next generation in China.

This to me is the problem defined. As a foreign missionary, I believe that my working in a church-planting capacity is the best way to address this problem. Modeling church-planting, modeling a church-planter, modeling a church and a pastor. If you want to work in China, you need to consider how you are addressing this need. You may have a different means of addressing, but you must not ignore the need altogether!

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Don’t Leave Home Without…

Recently made friends with an American student who is studying Chinese for the summer at our university. He heard like third-hand that we were leading a local church, so after class last week he caught up with me on the elevator and asked if he could come. Turns out he’s also interested in getting involved in missions in this part of the world. At my house the other day, he asked me what training I had to come here and what kind of preparation I thought was necessary for a guy to start a church here.

While I’m hardly qualified to answer that question fully, I can say some of the things that have been absolutely essential to get us this far. I’m sure that there have been plenty of guys that have arrived in China better prepared than I was, but I am very thankful for my training and really can’t imagine what in the world we would do without it. But his question is a great one; here’s what I would call the basic training package for church-planting in China:

1. Internship in a church-planting ministry NOT in China – at least six months of practical, firsthand training in a successful, wide-open church plant. Several reasons to not have it here, but one of the big ones is that it’s hard to find anyone here that doesn’t have a philosophy altered by the environment. Far better to go somewhere where they’re running full-throttle, then come to China and cool it down a little bit.

2. Mentor that will be perfectly honest with you – someone who will not accept your excuses, someone who thinks outside the box, someone who will hold you biblically accountable. My own mentor was here with us recently, and he smashed me on several counts. Makes me want to kill him, but it’s one of the kindest things anyone’s ever done for me.

3. Proof of language-learning ability – save yourself some time and money and make sure you can learn the hardest language in the world. In my opinion, the language here is far more of a hindrance to Gospel ministry than the government’s restrictions. By the way, probably the best indicators of language learning ability are work ethic and willingness to look like an idiot, not your grades in high school Spanish.

4. Bold ministry to work with in China while you learn the language – find a place where the ministry strategy doesn’t revolve around fear. This is probably the hardest one of these to accomplish. You need to get a vision of a work that God is blessing in China, and not a hundred reasons why He can’t. A hint – if there are people around you saying things like ‘read a letter from the father’ and ‘our club is having a water party,’ you are in the wrong place.

You probably notice some conspicuous absences from the list. A Bible college education, a faithful support base, ability to adapt to culture, etc. are all good, but they’re not the hardest things to get – plenty people do get them, in fact, but still arrive on the field ill-prepared.

If you’re not prepared in one of these areas, but want to be, you need to write Mark at coffey@bcwe.org to find out how.

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Organizational Baggage

So there’s a foreigner that’s come to our services for the past couple of weeks. It’s been great to have him around – he’s had some mission trip experience with a great organization and is extremely willing to jump right in and serve. When he came the first week, though, he was a little confused. Because according to the organization he’s served with (again, an awesome group), doing this kind of missions in China is impossible. Not just his organization – almost every group with a presence here is the same way.

When outsiders find out the way we’re working, their first reaction is to teach us how dangerous it is. They assume that we’re putting pictures on facebook, having open church services, and not speaking in code because we just don’t know about the way things are here. For the record, ‘the way things are here’ is generally NOT the way things are here.

There are many reasons for the fear-mongering (and that’s all most of it is); most of them are wrong. But a big one is an organizational problem. Here’s how it works: a big missions organization wants to get rolling in the mainland, which for them means moving serious manpower and resources. Establishing corporate or non-profit entities, buying properties, etc. They want a major presence in the country that they can formally control. Of course, they know that certain laws in China allow for expulsion for foreign mission workers.

And there’s the problem: if one of their people should run into problems ‘with the law’ and be expelled, that puts their whole organization on the line. Every person, place, entity, and property connected to that person is liable. Because of these solid connections to a larger web, the stakes get much higher for big organizations in China (who came with a desire to preach the Gospel). So the org.’s set up some strict rules – conditions for sharing the Gospel, words you can and can’t say, the kind of ministries you can pursue, etc.

It turns out that most foreign workers are much more afraid of breaking their org.’s rules than breaking the law.

What to do? Break up the network’s formal ties. Maintain connections of accountability and direction, but make sure one guy going down isn’t going to take down everything you have in the country. Free your workers to run risks. Otherwise, you will continue sending 100 men to do the work of one!

Great weekend at church by the way, two newcomers made professions of faith! Preached on the eternal justice of God – or Hell as we sometimes call it. Pretty interesting anyway – check out Luke 12:4-7 – Jesus tells them to fear, then immediately tells them not to fear! Praise the Lord for the two who were set free from fear this week!

Just When You Thought…

…it was safe to stop thinking about China…

After a much-needed four month blogging sabbatical (okay, maybe not much-needed), it is time to resume fully operational updating maneuvers. It would be hard to go back and talk about all that’s happened in these four months, so suffice it to say that it’s been an amazing time, God has blessed in incredible ways, and I am more persuaded than ever before that the Gospel of Christ can change lives.

This past week we were excited to have Austin Gardner here with us. He has majorly invested in my life, and it was awesome to have him here with us to get his perspective and advice on where the Lord has led us thus far. (It was primarily his encouragement that has driven me back to writing) We had a special activity this past weekend which was a landmark in our church’s history:

1) Our newly-formed activity committee planned the entire activity by themselves. And they did a fantastic job, by the way – I was really proud of them. They about flatlined when I told them I wasn’t even going to the activity (a bonfire after the church service), but they really earned a big victory!

2) We had our high attendance for one service and for all of our services in a weekend. The place was packed, and there was a fantastic number of first-timers.

3) My first time translating. Wasn’t sure what was going to tap out first, my tongue or my brain, but they were both at the breaking point.

No one trust Christ that night that I know of, but everyone heard the Gospel presented exceedingly clearly and convincingly. Two students have accepted Christ this week in cell-group Bible studies led by Chinese students!

So expect more entries soon – there’s still a lot to discuss about the Gospel in China!

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Holiday Consolidation

The Chinese New Year Festival is underway. It’ll go on for a couple weeks. A lot of businesses will be closed the whole time. Quite a grocery shopping frenzy leading up to the day before the festival. But most of the big stores are open, as we enter the time of year where a billion typically frugal Chinese are ready to blow some cash.

 

This is the big holiday – and just about the only one recognizable as a major holiday in western terms as far as I can tell. Most other holidays are pretty hard to distinguish from normal days, and the celebrations are fairly low-key. Not so with the Spring Festival. And it makes us for the rest handily. It’s like all the major American holidays rolled into one. It’s got the feasting, family time, and TV-watching of Thanksgiving, the crazed shopping, big spending, and relative cultural importance of Christmas, plus the fireworks and national pride of Independence Day. And it’s the time off of work of all the holidays put together, too…

 

And don’t get me started on the fireworks. My wife never tires of them. I like fireworks. Maybe an hour of them. A week of them is a little much. The last few hours before the new year the noise really starts to escalate, though. You could look out any window in any direction and see fireworks going off in a dozen places. It sounds like a war is going on outside. Fireworks right on the city streets is a little bizarre. Noise bounces off all the buildings. Plus we’re on the ninth floor, so most of the big fireworks explode right in front of our windows. Seriously, you open the windows and burning junk flies into your house. The entire city is just a smoky mess for hours and hours.

 

And they get a kick out of the ones that just make noise, too. No colorful sparks or anything. Just a solid minute of deafening explosions. These ones make the biggest mess, too. Two days after the festival began now, and the streets are still covered in scraps of charred red paper. Really amazing.

 

Holidays are a good reminder of a cultural gap. When you see the whole city going crazy, and you just don’t care – there’s still a disconnect. Part of cultural adaptation, then, is learning to care – to do the traditional stuff, to feel like this is your holiday, even if you don’t.

 

My Personal Halloween

Probably one of my least favorite things about being a missionary is wrestling with fear. Not that missionaries have a corner on fear – I imagine there’s no escaping this battle no matter who you are. Whenever you have a sense of God’s direction, there is always going to be an accompanying sense of fear. That is, if you intend to walk the line of God’s will, you had better be ready to face your fears. Fear of failure. Fear of change. Fear of the unknown. Fear of people, their actions, and their reactions.

 

This is a scary time of year for me – my own personal Halloween. Almost all of our church is gone off to their hometowns to celebrate the Spring Festival. Which leaves me for a couple weeks… to my self. Get in some much-need language study, planning, and reading. But fears frequently pound at the door of my little office. What if the students don’t come back to church when they return? What if their families are tearing down their faith? What if we lose all our momentum? What if we have to start over again? What if we fail?

 

I feel pretty proud of myself sometimes that I’m not afraid of lots of things that missionaries in this country are. But my fear of falling short is just as wrong as their fear of being kicked out of the country. It is pretty amazing really how many times in Scripture God (or some representative of His) tells people to ‘fear not.’ God gets imperative about it – gives us a strong hint about how He feels about it. Why? Fear is the emotional expression of doubt. Fear strongly implies that you’ve got reason to worry. That you might be unprotected from something. Which your Protector just might take offense to. When I fear failure, my heart is betraying my lack of confidence in God’s power and plan. I have ceased to dwell on Him and centered instead on some looming unknown. There is no fear in all of life centered on God’s person.

 

What to do with it then? Look deep into His power. That which looms hauntingly before me today is merely a pawn’s pawn in His glorious plan – its path laid plain before Him an eternity before. I must give Him the place I have given my fear – front and center in my mind. I meditate on its power and its plan. I consider what it will do to me. I consider how insignificant I am in its path. Turns out my fear seizes God’s throne in hearts. May He teach us to trust Him more.

 

 

The Good Ship Disciple

Last night was encouraging – though this season bears plenty of discouragement. Everyone is heading home for the holiday. School is out, and most of our friends are already gone. It can get pretty lonely – we’re really blessed with a good number of close friends here – not particularly fun to have them all leave at the same time. Probably had about a dozen people or so last night – down from 100 two weeks ago. This is our second time to go through this vacation here – we’ll be praying the church comes back strongly as the new semester starts. Seemed to last year – have to trust the Lord again this year.

 

Because it’s so cold here, and because the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), the winter break is just as long as the summer break. Leaves us with a couple big six-week holes in our calendar each year. But I pray that we’re wise enough to see these potentially discouraging times as opportunities: to work on my language skills, to focus on those disciples who are spending most of their break here, and to prayerfully plan for the next semester.

 

With that in mind, our services over the break will be deeper Bible studies around a table. We’re doing a study on being and making disciples. To say I’m thankful for the first night’s results would be an understatement – we really had a great time! The lesson (What is a disciple?) had about a billion verses to look up, some discussion questions at the end, and a suggestion for further study (the students that are still here have nothing but time on their hands). Listening to them argue out the differences between being a disciple and a believer was really fantastic.

 

Later, one of the guys that’s really stepped into the upper tier in the last couple months was talking to one of our most faithful girls, and they wanted to ask me some questions. Explained to me that they want to be sharing the Gospel with their friends but still feel unsure about what to tell them. This girl had a friend of hers call her last week and say, “I’ve been thinking about it, and I want to become a Christian – what should I do?” Kinda froze – last thing she expected, though she’d been witnessing to him for some time. So we talked about how their roommates see them and their faith. The guy says that his friends are finding out he’s a Christian, but he’s not sure how to turn a conversation to that person’s spiritual condition. Both of them have friends that make fun of them for being believers. Pretty amazing – this girl really demonstrates how important response to criticism is to the effectiveness of your witness. Everyone in her dorm knows she’s a Christian – they see her reading her Bible everyday. And though they’ve all consistently mocked her for it, eventually they’ve all asked her about her faith. Finally, just a couple weeks before Christmas, two of them approached her and asked if they could come to church with her!

 

Anyway, blessed to have some wonderful students like these two to work with, you can see why we hate to miss them for six or seven weeks.