Tag: Thoughts on Missions Page 12 of 13

Last year we were #49 and this year we are #33.

But this isn’t the Top 40 chart. This isn’t a list you want to move up.

Every year, Open Doors publishes a listof the top 50 countries in the world where Christians are persecuted.  It’s not a list you want to be on.

And Tanzania is #33, out of 196 countries in the world.

North Korea is #1 and Nigeria is #10.  Surprisingly, countries like Algeria, Columbia, Kuwait, and Turkey are lower on the list than Tanzania.  African countries in general are moving up on the list.

As I reflect on living in a country on this list, here is what I’ve learned:

1.  Government religious freedom doesn’t always mean community religious freedom.  We are in Tanzania on missionary visas.  Our ministry has a website.  We don’t have to be careful about Christian terminology in emails.  Yet in the past couple of years in Tanzania, there have been reports of pastors being beheaded, churches bombedor burned, Christians murdered, and rioting.

2.  Westerners are ridiculously privileged, even when living abroad in countries on The List.  Of course, anyone, anywhere in the world, can find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time and the target of a terrorist attack.  But the truth is, it’s not the missionaries who are bearing the brunt of persecution, it’s the nationals.  And though there are some exceptions (such as in North Korea), deportation is usually the worst that would happen to a missionary who is “found out” in one of these countries.  I stand in awe of my suffering brothers and sisters around the world.  Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Not, “blessed are those with good jobs and health insurance.”  Blessed are those who are persecuted.  What are we missing out on?

3.  I don’t want to be associated with televangelists or abortion-doctor murderers, so therefore I’m not going to associate every Muslim with a terrorist.  I see the faces of my Muslim friends and their children who are attending school side-by-side with my children, and I feel their pain for what is being done in the name of Islam.

4. God is present, even in these dark places.  In Tanzania, the place where the most persecution is taking place is on the island of Zanzibar.  Ironically, it’s my favorite place to visit in Tanzania, and one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever experienced.  Gil recently went to language school there, and captured it’s stunning beauty.  In the center of the main city of Zanzibar is a church established by David Livingstone.  It was built on top of a former slave trade market, which Livingstone helped to abolish.  Redemption is there….waiting….until the gospel once again breaks forth.

5.  It’s so easy to become complacent, even when living in a country where persecution is happening.  For a while, everyone was so concerned about Saeed Abedini, who is imprisoned in Iran.  Then, it was the Christians in Iraq.  Now it’s the Nigerians.  It’s like we give God a whole 10 days of fervent prayer for a situation, and when He doesn’t answer within that time frame, we shrug our shoulders and life goes on.  When the media forgets, so do we.  Here I am, living in a country where persecution is actively happening, and yet even I forget to continue to pray.

If only we demonstrated in prayer the same perseverance that these brothers and sisters demonstrate in beatings, imprisonment, and torture.

61.7%

That’s the percentage of people on our mailing list who opened our email prayer update this month.

In January, we started using MailChimpfor our email newsletters.  One of the benefits is that we can compare the overall “open rates” of our newsletters over time.

Though this is interesting information for us, it was actually kind of discouraging at first.  An average of 60% of our 500 newsletter recipients (who all signed up voluntarily) open our emails.  And that’s how many open it….we don’t know the actual percentage of how many actually read it.  I’m guessing that’s a lot lower.

This information has helped us to write better letters.  How short can we make it and still say what we need to say?  That’s our goal.  We figure we have approximately 30 seconds of reading time to get our point across before people move onto the next email.

It’s also made us better at our subject lines.  We’ve learned that if the subject line is interesting, people are more likely to open it.  The newsletter with our highest open rate had a subject line of “Marriage Problems.”  We rejoiced when 76.6% of recipients opened that one.

Then we got kind of depressed when we realized that probably most of those people opened it because they thought we were having marriage problems (when actually we wrote about the class we taught on marriage and family).  Great.  Should we be more depressed that 76.6% of people wanted to read about our marriage problems, or that 23.4% of people on our mailing list didn’t care?

Now, before you go thinking that I’m putting a big guilt trip out there, hang with me.  If you are on our email list, please don’t read our letters out of guilt.  Or open them just to get our numbers up.

But I have been thinking about this.

Sometimes I wonder why we should even expect people to be interested enough in our ministry to read about it every month.  Should we have that expectation?  I do believe that the western church has idolized overseas missions and missionaries.  How are we any better than the animator in Hollywood who is living out the gospel in his own mission field?  Why is what we are doing more important than the family who is church planting in San Francisco?

We aren’t any better.  It’s not more important.  And yet you are not expected to read newsletters from those people every month.  They don’t get prayed for in front of the whole congregation, and their pictures are not on your refrigerator.

I am often uncomfortable with this.  I don’t like getting so much attention for what we do, when really we are simply living out our calling and passion for the glory of God–which is what millions of Americans are doing in their cities and neighborhoods.  There really shouldn’t be a whole lot of difference–and I think it would actually be pretty cool if the Church started treating ordinary laborers the same way it treats overseas laborers.

So.

Is there a purpose in reading missionary newsletters?  In inviting missionaries to speak at your small group?  In following and supporting their ministries?

…you will be my witnesses….to the ends of the earth…

…go and make disciples of all nations….

…with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation…

God cares about the nations.  He cares about the gospel going out into all people groups.  So we should care too.  And that’s pretty much all there is to it.

We shouldn’t care because missionaries are more important, or more spiritual, or because their ministry is more fruitful or significant than anyone else who is laboring for the kingdom of God.  We should care because God cares about the nations.

However, I totally understand the dilemma of too much information in this generation.  We are bombarded on a daily basis, an hourly basis, with information about everything and every place.  We receive dozens of emails, Facebook posts, Tweets, and Instagrams, every day…every hour!  There is no possible way we can absorb all of that information.

So this is my advice:  Choose one.

Choose one country.  Or one people group.  Or one missionary.  Or one overseas ministry.  And pay attention to it.  Read about it.  Pray for it.  Financially support it.  Get passionate about it.  Get your kids excited about it.  Advocate for it at your church.

Maybe over time, you can add more to your list.  But don’t get so overwhelmed by all of the information out there, and all of the missionary updates that fill up your inbox, that you just ignore them all.  Because you’ll be missing out on something important, and God wants to include you.

Listen, I really don’t expect all 500 people on our mailing list to read all of our updates.  I am really okay with that.  But I hope that if people aren’t reading them, it’s because they are so interested in a missionary somewhere else.

And one more thing–those people who are really into our ministry?  (You know who you are!) The ones who read every letter, tell us they are praying, send in a check every month, rejoice when we rejoice and cry when we cry?  Those people have a part in this ministry.  Someday, on That Day, when all is revealed, they will stand side by side with us and have a part in our joy.

Find a country, or a missionary, or a ministry, where that will be true of you too.

This is Gil’s newest invention for Josiah:  Bottlecap Hockey

Faith Community Church, I’m sure you would be very interested to know that your pastor is the reigning champion in the Medina house in Bottlecap Hockey.  

Bet you didn’t know that he is a man of so many talents.

Seriously, though, thank you for sending Pastor Steve to Tanzania.  Not only did he do a fantastic job training a group of pastors, but we got three days with him all to ourselves.  And when your senior pastor is kind and wise and encouraging, it doesn’t get much better than that.  

Churches, send your pastors to visit your missionaries.  Very little is more encouraging.

 

Yesterday, I came across these cards.  They are from 10 years ago, when we were raising support to go to Tanzania long-term.  People responded by sending in these cards, committing to pray or to give.

I looked through each one yesterday (many, many more than are shown here) with tears in my eyes.  These cards are from 10 years ago, and yet so many people represented by these cards are still praying for us, still supporting us….after all these years.

I can’t express how incredible and humbling it is.

Yesterday we got a visit from a friend who just joined our support team.  She’s the kind of person who inspires everyone she talks to, and she exudes passion for Jesus and missions.  She was explaining why she joined our team:

“As John Piper says, ‘Go, send, or disobey!'”

God has given us the privilege of going.  Yet we don’t forget, not for one minute, that we could not go without an army of senders.  I don’t doubt that One Day, when all things are revealed as they really are, that they too will share in the joy of what God is doing in Tanzania.

There’s just no easy way to bring up the topic of money.

I tried to think of something cute and clever.  I got nothing.

Do people get tired of missionaries talking about money?  Nobody has actually told me that, but I wonder sometimes.  A lot of times.

So can I just share a few things with you?  I really hope you will get my heart in this.

(Note:  My intended audience in this post is to our Church families and friends.  Anyone else is welcome to read, of course, but this one is more personal than the greater blog sphere.)

We are fundraising right now.  We will not be able to return to Tanzania until we have reached a certain amount.

Missionary fundraising is hard and awkward and wonderful.

It’s probably like the feeling a man gets when he asks a woman to marry him.  When a politician puts his name out as a candidate.  When a person hands in a resume for a job he really, really wants.

It’s a very, very vulnerable feeling.  

Will people get behind us?

Will God confirm this is what He wants us to do?

Does anyone else think this is as important as we do?

Or are we just crazy?

We believe in what God has called us to do.  We believe it is really, really important.

But we cannot do it without the Church.  Literally and figuratively and spiritually and in every way possible.

No one ever wants to talk about money in our culture.  It’s, like, one of the most awkward things to ever talk about.  And yet, that’s our job right now.  Ugh.  Hard.  Miserable, sometimes.

But then there’s the wonderful.

I remember that many years ago, Gil and I read a book on mission fundraising.  It told us that we should analyze the financial status of the people we know–look at their houses, cars, jobs, and then make an assumption as to how much money they make and how much they could afford to give us.  Then we should ask them, face to face, for that amount.

We decided way back then that would never be our approach.

How can anyone guess the financial status of a person by looking at their lifestyle?

Maybe it’s all on credit cards.

And who am I to “decide” how much they should give to our ministry?

Maybe they already give away so much, that they don’t have anything else to give.

And most importantly, where is the Holy Spirit in that approach?

If we really believe that God believes our ministry is important;

if we really believe that God is the one orchestrating all of this;

if we really believe that it is God who compels people to join our support team;

then who are we to “assume” who will or won’t join us, and how much they can give?

We are always, always surprised.  And it is always wonderful.

Our biggest financial supporter so far is a couple that I had met twice, and Gil had never met, when they joined our support team.  I barely knew them, and even if I had, I would have never guessed that they could help us so substantially.

There are three widows on our support team.

There are other missionaries on our support team.

People from all walks of life; some who are close friends, some who we don’t know well.  Some in their 80’s, some in their 30’s.

We have learned to have no expectations.  God always surprises us.  He delights in that, and in these days when I am feeling awkward, and anxious, and wondering if we we be able to leave on time, and wondering if people are sick of us talking about money, and wondering where it will come from….well, I must remind myself of that, over and over.

It’s His work, His ministry.  And He will surprise us.