World Mission

"Penga ya Wende" or "God is strong!"

Heal the World — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

This year, along with all other nonprofit organizations, the NGO I work for has suffered unfortunate donations losses. The economic situation in America is being felt around the world, probably more visibly here in Africa. People's wallets are simply being threatened; with income cuts, job losses, and uncertain job security so we are becoming less likely to see a need and actually contribute to it. It's not a big deal to us, we see an organization looking for funds and we simply turn a blind eye. Don't lie to yourselves, everyone at some point ignores the beggar on the side of the road. The ramifications of our actions aren't even seen by us, but here on the ground in W. Africa, working for one such nonprofit, the ramifications of the countries fiscal situation is terrifying. Budget cuts due to lack of donations has cost the children at the school I teach something that has completely changed their lives. We (Heal the World, inc.) no longer have the funds to provide meals for the students at our Shalom primary school. Many might read this and simply think "Big deal, they're Africans they'll survive, they're used to starving." The problem is, I can't think that, I can't even see how someone could. Three days these kids went without food and the effects were clearly visible to me. No smiling faces, no obnoxious kids with constant energy, running around like kids should. They all simply sat through class, heads down, no energy to spare in the hot African heat. This great of an effect, and only after three days?! The budget was cut for the rest of the year!

This put a huge pain in my heart, and I was/am determined to do something about it! As soon as I got home I sent an email to my pastor, Pastor Mark Murphy, begging for funds, begging for offerings to be taken up. His heart was touched and he did just that. He pledged two thousand dollars for the school!!! Literally, I jumped with joy! All my prayers were answered, these kids would eat for months! Going back to the school and telling the headmaster the good news the reality of things hit me dead in the face. That $2,0000 would last a total of... 3 weeks. Three weeks!?

With this bearing down on my heart I contacted the Vice President of the organization who, needless to say, wasn't happy about the kids not eating either. We talked and shared ideas and finally agreed that my two remaining months of service to Heal the World would be better spent in America, advocating, raising awareness, and spreading word of the Shalom schools situation. A situation more dire than my words can stress. Many of the students in that school are orphans, orphans here in Africa simply aren't the same as in America. The orphanages or too few to meet demands, orphans here are more often than not left to fend for themselves.

With my remaining two months I am driving coast to coast speaking in as many churches, colleges and high schools as I can along the way! Running a campaign in the midst of the current economic situation people are less likely to give, so now more than ever I am going to show that a few dollars can make a difference. A donation of six dollars will feed a child for one month here! That's what I am pushing, I will feed the school one child at a time, one month at a time, until I meet my 30,000 dollar goal. $30,000 is the price of feeding the school for one year, and that's a heck of a lot of six dollars. The best part is that it doesn't just nourish their bodies but through Shalom school it nourishes their minds & spirits at the same time! I hope to bring this cause to as many peoples ears as I can, and hopefully my words and pictures will touch their hearts. This is my calling, this is Gods will, and as the Mossi people say "Penga ya Wende" (God is strong!).

Thanks everyone who reads my blog and has felt touched enough to donate! For those who haven't given, I once again ask for one more donation! Help Heal the World by sponsoring me through providing the gas and food it will take for me to tackle such a huge project! Please? Donate Now! http://healtheworld.org/donate.php

Four Universal Questions Answered with a Biblical Worldview of Mission

Carrie Nye — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:03:09 -0700

I’ve mentioned in previous posts I spent the summer of 2005 in the tiny Eastern European country of Moldova. I was there on a solo mission partly to earn credit for my masters degree in missions and partly to lead a high school short-term missions trip for the church I was working for at the time. During the 2 weeks the high school students from Boston, MA were with me in Moldova, we spent most of our time living at an orphanage in the middle of the beautiful countryside.

By the time I was in Moldova, I had been on similar short-term missions trips to Mexico a handful of times and had been to Congo, Kinshasa in Sub-Saharan Africa. Needless to say I had seen poverty before. However, spending those 6 or 7 days in that remote Moldovan orphanage opened my eyes to a new level of poverty I had not yet experienced. I’ve thought a lot about why there was a noticeable difference between the places I had been and the place I was in Moldova. I’ve come to believe the difference to be that while in Mexico and in Congo, Kinshasa, I was a bystander. I was an onlooker to the poverty. I was a spectator to the mess and not part of it.

But in Moldova, at this orphanage, I lived among them, in their subhuman conditions for that week. Rather than arrive, shake some kids hands, give others hugs, snap a few photos and leave, the Boston high school students and myself stayed.

Moldova has a high number of orphans due to the countries poverty. The simple fact is parents do not make enough money to support their own children. They have no other choice but to send them to an orphanage. The government pours very little resources into these orphanages leaving hundreds of children in the care of 2 of 3 adults who don’t know what its like to have a day off.

This particular orphanage was over crowded with some of the neediest children I’ve ever met. Due to a high rate of alcoholism among Moldovans, deformities and mental disabilities run rapid among the children. The first child I shook hands with when we arrived was missing 2 fingers on his right hand. Others had severe mental handicaps and needs that were unmet.

The warn-out, thin mattress I laid my head on every night was soaked in urine. The facility turned the water tower on for showers once a week. And even then, it was a light trickle of pure cold. The single course for the day was potato soup (simply boiled potatoes in water) on days when the potato farm had enough potatoes.

During my 2 month stay in Moldova, I was hosted by a group of girls who had grown up together in an orphanage. They were all teenagers and had lived together in an orphanage in the city for most of their lives (This orphanage was funded by an American organization and the conditions were much more civilized). These girls remain close friends of mine and we keep in touch often. Five of them are now in the US between North Carolina and Georgia while 2 remain in Moldova.

I will never forget the final day of our stay in that orphanage in the countryside. We had a bonfire going and worship songs were being sung into the night sky. I was seated on the ground with 1 of my host girls beside me. Without warning, she tilted her head and laid it to rest on my shoulder. With an emotional, cracked voice, she softly spoke. “Why did God put me in a better orphanage in the city and why did he put these kids out here in this kind of orphanage?”

This young woman was asking an age old question that knows no boundaries. There are 4 questions that find their way into the minds of nearly every person on Earth. Here are some of the most asked questions among the nations:

►   Q. Where are we? (What is the nature of the world around us?)

►   Q. Who are we? (What is the essential nature of humanity?)

►   Q. What’s gone wrong? (Why is the world in such a mess?)

►   Q. What is the solution? (What can we do about it?)

Have you ever found yourself asking 1 of these questions or a combination of them? Or perhaps you’ve asked all 4 at some point? I know I have.

The good news is that the story of God answers all 4 questions. The story of God understands all 4 questions and the story of God has a solution to the problems they address.

So what are the answers? The following states brief answers that I would encourage you to seek out more when you have the time.

Q. Where are we? (What is the nature of the world around us?)
A. We inhabit the earth, which is part of the good creation of the one living, personal God, YHWH.

Q. Who are we? (What is the essential nature of humanity?)
A. We are human persons made by this God and in God’s own image, one of God’s creatures but unique among them in spiritual and moral relationships and responsibility

Q. What’s gone wrong? (Why is the world in such a mess?)
A. Through rebellion and disobedience against our Creator God, we have generated the mess that we now see around us at every level of our lives, relationships and environment.

Q. What is the solution? (What can we do about it?)
A. Nothing in and of ourselves. But the solution has been initiated by our God through his choice and creation of a people, Israel, through whom God intends eventually to bring blessing to all nations of the earth and ultimately to renew the whole creation.

The God of the Bible is a God of mission. He’s a God who knows our questions, who listens to us ask them and who answers us.

Consider the words of Paul to the Galatians as he reminded them of the ways our God cares and understands these questions:

Consider Abraham: "He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: "All nations will be blessed through you." So those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.” Gal. 3:6-9

When God announced the gospel to Abraham, he ignited his plan to answer these questions and restore his people to the way things were before the fall in Gen. 3.

Here is a brief outline as to God’s plan revealed through his story:

Gen. 12:1-3 YHWH’s redemptive plan revealed:

This plan is revealed 5 times in Gen. alone (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4-5; 28:14).
Gen. 1-2 reveals creation; Gen. 3-11 reveals the problem of sin; Gen 12 – Rev. 22 reveals the solution.
This plan occupies the rest of scripture, with Christ as the central focus and closing the canon of scripture with Rev. 7:9-10.

I don’t know about you but I have asked all four questions above and the only answer that makes sense is what God reveals to us in his Biblical story.

Have you asked these questions? If so, what provoked you to ask? Are there other questions you’ve seen raised that cross cultural lines? Do you think the answers to these questions are good enough answers?

Required Reading for Missions

Christy Tennant — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:29:12 -0800

In the past decade, two books have been profoundly important to me when it comes to world evangelism: Let the Nations Be Glad!, by John Piper, and Cities: Missions New Frontier, by Roger S. Greenway and Timothy N. Monsma. The former provides a robust theology for why we do missions*, while the latter addresses the changing focus of missions from the middle of nowhere in the bush or outback to the world's cultural centers.

I now have a third book for my list of required missions reading: The Meeting of the Waters: 7 Global Currents That Will Propel the Future Church, by Fritz Kling, releasing March 1 (click here to pre-order your copy at a discounted price.)

When it comes to how the work of foreign missions is executed, the twenty-first century has brought with it an entirely new set of trends that missionaries-in-training would do well to heed. Kling, a world traveler many times over in his role as president of a philanthropic management firm, has spent years on the ground in "the field," interacting with leaders throughout global Christendom, asking questions and analyzing his findings into seven "global currents" presently at work in the river of world missions.

From my much more modest experience doing missionary work in Asia, Central America, Africa and North America, I found myself uttering enthusiastic "amen's" throughout my reading of The Meeting of the Waters. How I wish I had the perspective this book offers when I first delved into the world of foreign missions over a decade ago. Kling is careful to honor the old wineskins, which for centuries have broken ground and reaped fruitful returns in many unreached areas. However, he is unapologetic and unflinching in his honesty when he articulates the changing tide of world evangelism and the challenges those changes pose for Christians going forward. While I could never quite get comfortable with the title he gave old-school missionaries - "Mission Marm" - neither could I deny the accuracy of his conclusions that we - those of us committed to doing the work of world evangelism - must change our perspective.

I hope every missionary, pastor, and student of the Christian faith will read this book; its message is profoundly important, both philosophically and pragmatically. I also hope those who are non-vocational Christians will also read it, as the implication of these seven global currents is every bit as important for those not called to be in full time ministry as for those who are. In fact, one of the conclusions this book makes is that the work of world evangelism will be accomplished not by a few individuals with a vocational call to missions, but rather by the students, businessmen, artists, filmmakers, educators and political leaders who shape world culture.

Order your copy of The Meeting of the Waters now, and add this excellent book to your missions library. Besides the Bible, I cannot think of a more relevant, practical resource for those who plan to work on behalf of world evangelism in the twenty-first century.

("Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church; worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn't." This is the opening line of John Piper's missiology book, Let the Nations Be Glad!)