Kingdom Come!

Recently, I was reminded of a photo taken in New York on the infamous 9/11. You probably remember it. In it sooty-faced men and women run terrified from the fiery Twin Towers as smoke billows through every door and window. Their faces show the anguish of their burning, horrifying world. They are fleeing for their lives, leaving everything else behind. The whole feeling is one of terror and fear.

But in the background running in the opposite direction is a firefighter, decked out in all the equipment necessary to protect him as he resolutely goes about his job of rescuing those trapped inside. These guys are on a mission!

Our world is reeling from rising gas prices, a looming economic recession, falling real estate values at home and a crumbling dollar abroad. The United States is involved in two real on-going death-causing wars. And cyclones, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis seem to devastate somewhere almost monthly.

USA Today recently reported that in the near future crude oil will rise to $200 per barrel. Delta Airlines is raising airfares by 15-20% to keep up with rising fuel prices; one third of their total budget is now spent on fuel. Delta also reported a $6 Billion loss the first quarter of 2008. Most airlines are reducing the number of routes they fly and implementing other drastic cost-saving measures. They’re not talking about profits anymore. They are talking about survival.

Like in the photo, they’re running from the building!

Businesses across the country are also scrambling to find ways to save money by lowering fuel consumption. One news commentator recently declared: “Take your money out of savings and buy food.” He was serious. He wasn’t talking about food shortages, but about food prices. These days, with such low interest rates and soaring prices, buying food is a better savings plan than putting your money in the bank!

So here’s one reason why this sits so heavy in my mind and heart…

Missionaries, like firefighters are those who run – not away from the flames and the danger and the difficulties, but toward them.

Their life, their goal, their focus is not on safety, security or comfort, but on taking the Good News of
Jesus to a world aflame!

The assignment God has given Phyllis and me for all these years is to prepare and equip men and women – not to run from danger and difficulties, but to run toward them! Not to seek comfort, success and ease, but to listen to the voice of God, understand His Great Mission and to run to the place He wants you!

In the next few days, we will once again graduate around twenty people from Globe’s Institute for Global Ministry (IGM). They will be better prepared to take the Gospel of the Kingdom to a hurting world! They will understand the biblical mandate to take the Gospel to the hard places. Places where there are no churches. Places where the governments are antagonistic. Places where the dominant religion is radically opposed to Jesus and the Gospel of the Kingdom.

These graduates will better appreciate the biblical understanding of “people groups,” tribes and cultural boundaries. They will understand biblical story-telling to non-literate learners. They will better understand the great Mission of God to change lives, reverse misfortunes, see His great Name glorified and worshipped by all men and women everywhere.

This season in our life is spent mostly in America with Americans. It is one of preparing, encouraging, mentoring and assisting them to explore God’s purpose and plan for their lives. A little different, but yet the same. And it’s a pretty big task – it seems. Everything in the world seems to be falling apart and the natural tendency is to disengage – run away. Flee where it’s safe and warm. But the men and women we’re training aren’t looking for the easy way.

Thanks for standing with us – in prayer and by giving – in our assignment to train and equip another generation to run toward the fire, not away.

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Tags: missions, missionaries, Globe International, IGM,

Well Peggy (whom I met a the Allelon gathering at Seabeck) read my yesterday blog about time and had (her words) a “bit of a blog storm.”  Seems she did double-duty after reading super-blogger Scot McKnight over at Jesus Creed.

Well, I’m humbled.  Peggy is a blogging, thinking “contemplative practitioner” in the Pacific Northwest .  (“Contemplative practitioner” is a phrase Bill Taylor used to describe the kind of missionary needed in the 21^st century.  We met in a North Africa Partnership conference in Malta some years back.  I’ve used the phrase often since then, cause I like it!)

It’s been a whirlwind week.  The Globe Missions Conference was amazing.  A great time but very tiring.  So the office is closed today and I’m spending a day with my Honey (AKA Phyllis).

I had a great time with a bunch of folks.  I especially liked the time with Josh and Akiko Jones.  They are an awesome young couple doing a church plant in Japan . 

Andreas and Marion Pestke - our German friends on their way to Nicaragua - are out of our house for a few days.  They’re travelling with Brad and Jan Thurston in Alabama and then back next week for the Globe Summit.  The house is quiet without them.

And now a word from our sponsor…

Someone asked me how we do what we do, and I answered that it’s through “missionary support.”  That is a code word for donors and contributors.  So just in case someone out there cyberspace wanted to help us continue doing what we do, you can click here and give all day long!  Any amount is ok!  However many zeros you want to include on the end of the number is fine!  We’ll use it to keep ourselves fed, clothed, housed and healthy so that we can do the stuff God has for us to do.  Enough said…  Thanks.

And now back to the show…

I believe in missions done well.  I believe in men and women taking Jesus’ words serous enough to sacrificially lay aside the “good life” and the American Dream to serve a bigger Dream and see the Kingdom of God – His loving rule and reign – established in the lives of men and women around the world. 

I don’t like “missions” being delegated to an underfunded and neglected department of the church or relegated to an annual offering or Missions Sunday.  I don’t like missionaries relegated to super-hero status nor left out in the cold when they limp home with stories so out of the zone that people’s eyes glaze over.  I don’t like missionaries belittled by uber-pastors who feel superior having 500 spectators, when missionaries labor in primitive conditions and have 12 disciples. 

And I don’t like the sacrifice of traveling zillions of miles, living on a shoestring while learning languages and starting from scratch equated to a youth group making a two week pre-planned safe and solid missions trip.

I believe in missions done well; with sacrifice, patience, wisdom and hope.  I believe in missions done well that results in disciples being made and churches being planted.  Whether in New York or New Delhi, Nairobi or Newark, Seattle, Sarasota or Katmandu . 

As Sandy Carter (a Globe Missionary who herself can be quite a rock star) once said, “Missions isn’t glamorous – if it’s done right.”

Today, I get a few minutes - 3 separate times - to share a little about the Globe Learning Community.  I go into such times with fear and trembling.  This morning in the Globe Family Meeting, I’ll talk about how training becomes our doorway into Globe and how this fits into our emphasis: “Making Disciples, Planting Churches, Reaching Nations.”  Somehow I’ll want to fit that into our core values: Faith, Service and Mercy.

Then this afternoon I’ll have an hour with Globe trainers and educators from all over the world to chat a little about how we can do it better and move toward indigenous ministries.

Tonight at the Globe Banquet, we’ll show our IGM recruitment video and then I’ll give a plug for IGM and our training ideas.

Recently Phyllis came up with a slogan for us at Globe: “Do it right, do it well, do it together.”  This whole conference - in the midst of many challenges and conflicts - is about learning these things.

Missionaries (and their agencies!) have many conflicts regarding serving and doing things together.  I’ve been watching a lot of people over the last few days, both missionaries and IGM students, and it’s obvious that we are all challenged to bring things together leaving egos, agendas and wounds behind.  And it’s ahrd to do it well, or even right, when every step is a path of wounds and pain.  So we pray also for healing and renewed faith.

Today and the rest of the week should be a great challenge.

Well here we are in the midst of Globe International’s missions gathering.  We’ve got missionaries here from South Africa, Mexico, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Scotland, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, Japan, India and Nepal.  And there are more.  these are the ones my tired mind remembers.

Today there was an extended prayer session for missionaries.  Pastor Sam Webb ministered to many as he prayed with them.  Phyllis and a group of ladies worked like Trojans (I don’t know where that expression came from, but I use it…) making lunch for the missionary gang.

Tomorrow many of the missionaries will be speaking in local churches.

Monday I have a part in sharing about the training initiatives we have going and the development of the Globe Learning community.  I get about 5 minutes in the morning Family Gathering, about an hour to foster discussion among those who do training all over the world. And then 5 minutes at the Globe Banquet Monday night.  (You might say a wee prayer for me… it’s easier for me to speak for an hour than for 5 minutes!  Yikes!)

We also have in our home for a few days Andreas and Marion Pestke.  They are from Germany where  he has bi-vocationally pastored a church.  They are enroute to Nicaragua to work with Sandy Carter and Globe Nicaragua.  They are “sent out” by Globe Europe (GE) and my good friend Brad Thurston is the director.  (Brad gave me a GE cap!  As usual I look quite striking in it!  Has a nice GE logo on the front… and says “together for the nations.”  Cool!)

Andreas and Marion are great folks!  (I have to say this because they read this blog and were concerned that I would say something unkind about them as our houseguests… but I can’t think of anything that I could say about them that would be unkind… unless I lied.)  But they are irritating: they are very thin; they get up every morning and walk or jog in the neighborhood and they help with the dishes and make coffee and all that.  Terribly irritating.  Phyllis will now expect me to be like them.  And lose weight.  And exercise.  And make coffee throughout the day and keep things tidy.  Germans!

Speaking of coffee, both Johnny Cruz (Honduras) and Sandy Carter (Nicaragua) brought me coffee from their respective countries.  Colleen Hawthorn promised me some coffee and perhaps some tea from Burma.  She’s just come from there.

I had a great conversation with Danny and Judy Armstrong.  They are long time Globe International missionaries.  They are doing lots of things in missions awareness and emphasis on taking the Good News to Asian Muslims.  They are fantastic people.

We have an IGM attendee (he’s not actually enrolled) named Jack Frost.  He’s just completed a time with Teen Challenge and is so very interested in missions.  But here the very coolest thing: he keeps hanging around and cleaning up!  Taking out trash, vacuuming and tidying (you’d think he was German or something, but he ain’t!) and just helping out.  He keeps saying what a privilege just to hang with missionary heroes and serve them.  Wow!  What a heart!

But these men and women I’m around these days are heroes!  They’ve set aside success and advancement and achievement to serve God and give heir lives for Him and His ministry.  Heroes!  When I stand and chat with men Roger West and Bob Hill and Johnny Cruz and Jerry Smith and all these guys and ladies, I feel like I’m kinda on holy ground.  They’ve given - and continue to give - their lives for the Gospel.  And hey, men and women like these are worthy of honor.

To live “missionally” is more than just to have a new cool label that replaces the last new cool label. 

It seems to me that many people do that.  They change labels on empty jars and assume that is enough.  The jar remains empty, but the label is updated with the newest jargon and logo.  And “missional” is now the label of choice.

A young man sat in my office recently.  He and his wife and a few friends spent the summer in Thailand helping an indigenous church.  And sitting in my office, he began to weep and get a distant look in his eyes.  “Since I came back form Thailand , I just feel this deep, deep sorrow.  And sometimes, I just weep and I don’t know why.  Sometimes I just feel so distant from the church, the pastor and the people there.  And I don’t know why.  Something in being in Thailand changed my life. And I feel sad.”

I understand. 

I understand the sadness.  A sadness so deep and so profound that it shatters something inside.  And that something – Heart? Spirit? Self? – cannot be reassembled to work in the same old way.  It can’t be bondo-ed and repainted to “look as good as new.”   It has been intensely changed; as if pieces have been lost; as if the shattering has left it defective and irreparable.

Doing missions God’s Way is about that.  God’s way is the missional way.  God’s way is the reaching outside of you, your community, your paradigm and into the hurting, ostracized world of grief and woe.

And it leaves you broken.

I remember hearing the story about a young girl who came forward in a church meeting volunteering for “mission service.”  When the wise old missionary asked her how she knew she was supposed to be a missionary, she replied, “Somehow, God put the whole world in my heart, and then He broke it.”

I understand.

Being missional means moving back in the neighborhood.  It means learning to care about the neighborhood.  The People.  The Children.  The broken relationships.  It means caring about the trash and the garbage.  And the death and the pain.

I understand.

My friend Andrew Jones has a great article about self supporting missions.  Several suprising things here:

• Andrew blogs as Tall Skinny Kiwi for a good reason… he’s tall, extremely skinny and from New Zealand (Kiwiland) 
• Andrew and his family live in Scotland.  I first “met” Andrew via the internet while he and his family lived in Prague and we lived in Nicosia.
• Andrew has lived all over the blooming world - including San Francisco - and has been involved in organic church planting, etc. everywhere he’s been.
• Andrew and I were last together at Seabeck, WA last October.
• His article quotes CMS (Anglican Church Mission Society) secretary Henry Venn regarding indiginazation and “3-self churches” from the 1850’s!  Very cool.  And sad.  Since he reflects a totally non-19th nor 20th century approach to Church planting (CP).

It’s worth the read.  Short, sweet, to the point.  As we continue to look at ways to plant churches, it’s good to look over our shoulders at the wisdom of others.

Alan Hirsch pointed me toward this…  (Unfortunately, I’m not smart enough to know how to embed it into my blog… so, here’s the URL)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tDGQ9vxEjo

Brad, my new Seabeck front porch rocking-chair buddy, has tagged me to do the 30-20-10 history gig.  He wants me to blog my history in decade increments.  So that requires that I think back, so here goes…

30 years ago… that would make it 1977… I was a just a mere twinkle in my daddy’s eye - gone bad.  By about 26 years!  Yikes!  Phyllis - my college sweetheart - and I had been married about 5 years and have no children.  We are living in a small South Georgia hamlet called Hahira - 2000 people, cats and dogs.  I am the controller and personnel manager of a small private hospital and part of the leadership in a cell-church store-front plant.  We don’t know anything about church planting, cell churches or anything really.  We’re just newly filled with the Spirit, coming from a background that taught (by neglect) that gifts ceased with the Apostles and that speaking in tongues indicated that the person was “one brick short of a load” (or as one friend prefers, “one sandwich short of a picnic”).  We are surrounded by a host of great people (many of whom still remain our friends and supporters!) who have input into our lives and for whom we are accountable.  It is a great time.  We as a church reach out to the widows and young people of the town.  We ran a Friday night movie and popcorn for the kids (mostly black) who could not afford to go out and get in trouble in the bigger towns.   (Unfortunately, everything imploded about 5 years later through difficulties in the leadership.  There was - I might add - no sexual misconduct or financial impropriety.  We lost much of our missional vision and things began to be about command and control… so along with a small band of followers, we left.)

Fast forward… 20 years ago (1987)… (Please hum along) …it was twenty years ago today; Sgt Pepper taught the band to play… Now we are living in Valdosta, Georgia, the “big city” of our South Georgia world.  Zachary is seven years old, driving his mother crazy because he’s so smart and stubborn.  And Jane our blue-eyed girl is a newborn. We live between the fraternity houses at Valdosta State College so at night there is always a bass-beat somehow permeating the air.  On campus and in our home, I do numerous Bible studies and teaching events and travel to three other colleges in Georgia.  Our emphasis is on making disciple-making disciples, teaching them to believe and do.  Although our campus ministry is independent and contributor-supported, we are part of a dynamic charismatic church family.  The pastor and I are great friends.  We are seeing good things happen on all fronts.  The church has a great vision for missions, church-planting, worship and discipleship.  It is balanced and growing.  Our campus ministry is about community and the Word.  We have two Koinonia houses around campus and Kingship Groups on-campus.

Another decade… Yikes!  10 years ago (1997)… Phyllis, Zach, Jane and I are now living in Nairobi, Kenya.  We are “faith missionaries” (that means we raise our own support) with Globe International.  I travel all over East Africa (and beginning this year - I think - into Egypt) teaching in leadership seminars mainly among indigenous churches and denominations.  I also oversee Manna Bible School in the hills outside the city.  Manna is a three-year interrupted-service school, bringing pastors and church leaders in for classes three times per year.  My children attend Rosslyn Academy.  Phyllis is active on-campus with Mom’s In Touch.  I work with a tremendous Kenyan team at Manna.  The school has grown from twelve students to around 125; from three times a year to a 12 month school.  We are seeing great success.  Our biggest struggle is financial not so much spiritual or relational.

So, Brad et al, this is the Hatcher History lesson.  Somehow we’ve always been about  discipleship and preparing the next generation.

I can’t get past this in my heart and in my thinking…

I’ve just stumbled across this post about Willow Creek’s program-based church.

I’m still in Honduras having lots of interesting conversations about church, missions, missional churches and loving Jesus. 

“Church” is such a complicated subject.  You’d think after all these years, we’d have some idea of what it’s all about.  Right now, it seems that the leadership crunch is the big problem.  And by that I mean, there are lots of managers and super-stars who want to be leaders, but who can only repackage someone else’s leadership.  Maxwell-ites, Hybell-ites, Warner-ites.  And there is nothing inherently wrong with following good examples - that work.  But NT-type leadership is more about shaping lives and empowerment than about amassing numbers and doing programs.  I think.

My soul longs for real koinonia and real vision.  Not Moses-down-from-the-mountain vision, but the how-can-I-activate-you vision.  (Not so much that I personally need activating!  But the kind of church leader who is concerned about activation of others, not just to put them into his system, but to release them empowered to do their thing…)  A multitude of this kind of leader will make a huge difference in the Church.

Last night, Nick Venditti asked me what I thought of the whole “emerging church” scene.  He sees it as a bunch of guys (and ladies) poised to repeat every mistake made by the Pentecostal and Charismatic and Third-wave movements of the past.  Maybe he’s right.  Seems to me the church in every generation is pretty much poised to live out the same mistakes of their fore-fathers.  Seems every new kid on the block must learn his own way on his own journey.

But I also see and sense a deep longing among the emerging/missional crowd for things to be authentic and real.  Simple and organic.  Resonating deep inside.