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People are Sharing Bible Stories

“Pastor Johnson just sent a message to say that people are moving all around sharing Bible stories and they are getting results. Will keep you updated.”

That was a text I received a week after my time in western Uganda. What we thought was going to be a small training ended up being 200 Ugandans from churches in 11 different village areas. During the few days we had together, we shared stories and explored them, much the same way early believers explored and learned lessons of faith, God, and Christ. On Saturday, market day, we decided to send all 200 out into the village to share these stories with anybody they met…

Two men shared the story of the demon possessed man (Legion, Mark 5) to a man at his market stand. “OH MY! That’s my story! How do I follow Jesus?!” He accepted Christ.

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Congratulations

“Congratulations…” And I don’t remember anything else said. And I don’t really care. After an hour of questions, I heard the magic words. Dissertation defended and approved. Doctorate done. Now I can read books about things other than African theology and contextualization theories.

Later, I read write-ups by the evaluation committee. One of them went into great detail about how he was sucked into reading parts of it. “You have a natural strength for making connections between seemingly unrelated cultural issues, drawing them to tangible ministry and theological conclusions. I found myself pulled into the Maasai world, intrigued, more curious as I read. However, a weakness was revealed in your academic writing style…” Three years ago when I was accepted into the program, I told the dean my greatest struggle was going to be writing four hundred pages in academic-eese. It’s not exactly how I’m wired. Guess what? Three years later, he said, “You were right.”

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“In Case Of Emergency…”

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Whenever I fly, I try to get exit row seats. As I got on my last flight into Asia, I saw this written on the side of the plane and realized it wouldn’t really matter where I sat. If there was an emergency, I’m supposed to…do what?! The flight attendant failed to say exactly how I was to exit the plane should we plummet from the skies. No mention of any bulkhead cutting tools located under the seats next to the life jackets. No blow torches where the oxygen masks were. I had extra leg room and all the pretzels I could want for the next two hours and I’d just sit there listening to the droning engine, but if there was an emergency, it would take a miracle to escape…

I was in our second training location in this country. In the room were fifty-seven men and women actively planting churches. All of them are working in Buddhist areas. Almost 100% of the people they live among have no idea who Jesus is, and Christianity is at best thought to be a mythical belief in a nameless god.

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Distance doesn’t matter

It was 4 AM and I heard these dreaded words. “Continue on south for 559 miles.”

Last Saturday I visited my son at his college. Forty-eight hours later I pulled in the driveway back home before my other kids left the house for school and then I went to the office. It’s been six weeks since we dropped our boy off at college. He’s in the film program and loves his editing and shooting and script writing classes. He’s not burned anything yet that I know of in the apartment. He’s doing well. There were a few hard things going on with each of us, though, and we both just needed to see each other, if for no other reason than we’re father and son.

The only thing keeping us from that was fourteen hours of monotonous interstate. Distance doesn’t change the fact that I’m his dad, even if that distance is half of the USA. When my son needs me, I’m coming to him. So I sat in the truck and headed south…

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Different Ways of Handling Pain

Pain management.  I was online looking up some medical stuff and saw this phrase more than once. From the very little that zipped past my eyes, I saw the words “patient-centered” quite often. I know there is a lot more to this than my grossly simplistic and naïve understanding, but those two phrases – pain management and patient-centered – stuck out to me.

When I have something that hurts or is obviously more than what a good nap and a bottle of ibuprofen can handle, I want to get rid of the pain, not manage it. I want a doctor who specializes in getting rid of these pains to do his thing that he’s good at and tell me what I need to do. In other words I want doctor directed diagnosis and treatment that I’m supposed to follow.

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“Let the Church be…”

Three weeks ago my son called. “Dad, um, the Durango…” Ends up our faithful family transportation finally decided to blow a rod or two while hehad it at college. Not his fault, just timing of an old vehicle deciding to die. So with the Durango gone and my old Mazda pickup likely headed to university next year, we decided to replace both with one vehicle.

Fast forward to sitting down with the car dealer as we finalize the details of purchasing a good used truck. Of course he’s trying to get me to buy add-on plans. “Well, sir, with this protection plan, if you get stains on the seats or floor, just bring it over and we’ll clean them up.” “Jeff, that’s ok. I’ll pass. It’s a truck.”

“Understood. But with this plan, you know how you get those scuffs on the side when somebody’s door whacks into your car? With this plan, you bring the truck back here, we buff them out and it’s good as new.” “No thanks, Jeff. It’s a truck.”

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[un]noticed women

Think of the names of the first ten people from the Bible that come to your mind.

How many of them were women?

In Jesus’ day, just as in our time, women of many cultures are marginalized in importance of a society. That is an over-generalization, but you get the idea. In many cultures women’s tasks are assumed to be those related to the house, children, and meals.

But think of the women in the Bible who made impacts that defined cultures, altered decisions, and impacted individuals who impacted masses. God continues raising up these humble women today.

I just got an email from a pastor friend in a south Asian country. A week ago he told me he was taking five women to a coastal village to teach other women. Two of the women could read. I don’t know how many of the village women could, but from experience in this country I would be very surprised if three or four of the twenty-five women coming for the training could read at a second grade level. Starting at about age five or six, these girls have spent years patching clothes and nets and going to the market for their fishing-dependent families.

image (1)This was the first time somebody had come to specifically teach these Christ-loving women a ministry skill.

This was the first time these five women trainers had ever trained anybody else too.

In a church made of bamboo and banana leaves and elevated on bamboo poles to keep from flooding, these women spent two days together. They taught each other stories. They talked about them. They went out at night and told other women in the village as they were making meals and chasing dogs away from the pots.

In this small Buddhist village on the coast, these unnoticed women talked about Jesus. And people’s lives are different – their neighbors as well as their own.

Bush pastor seminary

What do you do when your pastors are suddenly told what they are doing is illegal?

Most of us know of the difficulties in the underground churches and what persecution believers go through. But in Kenya a new law is suddenly hamstringing the Church.

Rules are now in place requiring all pastors to submit a certificate of good conduct and have a theological degree in order to do the work of a pastor (whether as his sole job or as an unpaid pastor).

The new laws come from good intentions as a measure to stop the growing tide of “send me $50 and your crops will be blessed” con artist pastors (and there are a lot of them in sub-Saharan Africa). But the ripple effect wasn’t thought through.

Almost 300 people gather under these trees each Sunday, one of many such churches in remote areas of Kenya.

Last month I was with our partner in the bush of Kenya. He has 200 pastors scattered in the remote parts, serving in small homesteads in the middle of nowhere. Almost all of them have not completed school and can’t read or write. Obviously none of them have theological degrees. So what does our partner do? Does he ignore the law? What about the fifty villages they are preparing to start church planting work in this year…does he not go? What about us – are we helping them break the law by training pastors who we know are going to be illegally leading churches?

As we sat together talking about this, we talked to Bishop James about starting a simple certification program that met the government’s requirements, but with a twist. What if we created an all story-based, no books, no handouts, no electronics, all discussion driven, modular course of study that could be done over a couple years’ time? Unschooled pastors could learn core theology, overviews of Old and New Testament, and important topics like church planting, discipleship, evangelism, and godly leadership, among other things.

This is going to take some time to develop and will definitely have some bumps along the way – we’re already seeing that – but how incredible would it be to have 200+ pastors living in the bush knowing 200 Bible stories that shape their congregations’ growth? Imagine the impact in sending new missionaries and pastors who have been raised in that from their youth and now are going into Muslim-dominant countries to the north of Kenya – Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, and into the Sahara Desert. Please be praying with us for this.

One liners

(Highlights Of The Past Year series)

On top of our refrigerator is a spiral notebook.  It houses a treasure of “kid-isms”, humorous things the kids have said, like several years ago when our three kids were probably five and three years old and a glass of milk spilled and my wife said, “Quick, use your hands and dam it up,” and the kids started chanting “Dam it!  Dam it!  Dam it!…” in front of our dinner guests.  We died laughing and couldn’t get the kids to stop chanting.

Most of the things in the notebook have one phrase that makes us all start laughing whenever it’s said, but there’s of course a longer story behind each one-liner that adds more details.

Well, the other day I got a short one-liner email from one of the men that I met six weeks ago in Congo.  “Thanks pastor!we are good all of us!and we try to telle the stories fom bible and we got some one!”  I told the family and we all started saying “We GOT one!” like it was a huge fish we’d hooked.  But none of us knew the story.  So I asked my friend what happened.  In his own words… 

Hello my pastor!!!

it has been longtime!look then how i was intruduis that peoples about the story from Gad’s word ;

one day; i was from the auditoruium;i met three womens on the road bearing vegetables to sell to the market; and then i greeted them and asked them if i could them to carry what they had. when we arrived to the market i aske them to duscuss abit about God’s word;so i started telling them about one story from bible in matthew 9:27-30

He continues telling me about their conversation over this short four verse story.  He finishes with this…

i asked if they ready to receive Jesus in their life.  we are two of them said.we prayed.

then they recommended me to pass the market oftenly for teaching them Gad’s word together with their friends.

this is the story my pastor!i don’t know if have get my point,because i don’t know english only swahili.

Every good one-liner has a story behind it.

Simple

We started driving up a road that was as smooth as craters on the moon’s surface.  Our van’s shocks didn’t exist anymore.  Neither did our kidneys.

“Mzungu!  Mzungu!…” (“White skin!  White skin!…)  Kids started running after the van.  The closer we got to the feeding center in the small village, the larger the crowd of curious kids got.  Finally the parade stopped and eleven mzungu got out of the van.  “Jambo.”  (“Hi.”)  That was pretty much the extent of our Swahili abilities, which just brought giggles, a few handshakes from the braver kids, and a couple of shrieks of terror from one or two of the smaller ones, which makes sense if you’ve never seen eleven grownup mzungu before.

And then we stood there.  Waiting for the rice and beans to finish cooking.  The feeding center gives three meals a week to undernourished kids who stood waiting with their cups.  But right now, everybody just stared.  Unblinking stares.  Holding their cups ready for the rice.  And the crowd grew bigger.  Our translator was talking to one person, so the rest of us – eleven mzungu, fifty kids, and a growing crowd of adults –  were just staring at each other.  Without a translator, there’s not much else you could do. 

dirt drawExcept draw.  I squatted down and kids started spreading out in a circle jostling for closer position.  I cleared some dirt and drew a simple smiley face.  One brave kid squatted next to me, the mzungu with a stick drawing circles.  I gave him the stick and he took it, but wasn’t sure what to do.  “You draw…”  He tried.  His circle looked like a bug splattered on a windshield.  So I drew a new circle, picked up some bits of wood, rocks, grass, and started putting them in the circle.  Eyes, nose, ears.  The last to go was a smile.  I had him put it on.  He did.  The kids who could see started laughing.  The boy looked at me and grinned.  Other kids started picking up sticks and drawing bug splatter shaped smiley faces.  Amazing how something as simple as making a face in the dirt can bring joy.

Our trip to Congo had several moments like this, reminding me of the power of simple things.  Handing out rice and beans.  Sizing up children to fit into dresses and shorts made by a group of women in the US.  Giving a new pair of underwear to kids who had worn the same pair for a few years.  Sitting with women who have been victims of brutalities that have left them socially outcast and watching them make baskets that they sell.  Buying the baskets they made to help restore their self-dignity instead of just giving them money.  Bringing a suitcase of maxipads and hearing their loud joyful high-pitched “la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la…” African cry when they understood what they were for.  Being comfortable being stared at.  Simple things.

I think Jesus really liked simplicity.  Share a story. Eat a meal. Sit with people. Cry with them.  Laugh with them.  Walk beside them.  Teach them.  Take them one step closer to understanding His Father. 

No, I’m not avoiding telling you about the story training we did.  It went well.  There were fifty believers from different communities we were able to train.  This month they are going to villages, including this small village, and will let me know next  month how it has gone and who else they are teaching storying to.

Each trip I’m more convinced that storying is a simple universal language that God uses.  Almost as simple and universal as a mzungu and a Congolese village boy drawing smiley faces in a dirt road and smiling at each other.