6 Ways You Can Support Missionaires

From The Gospel Coalition:

"What can we do to help? Can we send you a short-term team?"

As a missionary on furlough, I have often been asked these questions by supporters, home churches, and missions committees. Understandably, some supporters want to be as hands-on as possible in helping their missionaries. Sending a short-term team may look like an attractive option. But even when these offers stem from sincere motives, sending a short-term team may not always be the most helpful way to support missionaries. In fact, sometimes missionaries feel pressure to accept short-term teams even if they do not actually need them—especially if the request comes from a major supporting church. Furthermore, some missionaries are drained by hosting short-term teams. The planning often requires them to deflect significant amounts of time and attention away from ministering to locals. This is especially true if short-term team members have not been properly trained or informed prior to the trip, are not culturally adaptable, lack overall maturity, or do not speak the local dialect.

1. Pray for your missionaries regularly. Then tell the missionary you're praying for specific prayer requests.That said, overseas missions would be impossible without the committed, consistent support of well-informed people and churches back at home. Here are six alternative ways to support missionaries and take part in God's mission to the world.

One missionary shared recently that he ran some statistics on his outgoing prayer emails. He discovered that a large portion of his prayer emails—possibly more than half—weren't even opened by the recipients, the people he was counting on as his prayer warriors. This is disconcerting. Writing quick emails to your missionary to tell them you're praying for specific requests assures them that, no matter how isolated they might be, their ministry is being covered in prayer. Being specific about your prayers will help them know you are looking over their requests carefully. If your address or contact information changes, be sure to let your missionaries know; this applies to missions committees as well as individual supporters. Nothing is more discouraging to a missionary than returned prayer letters and unanswered phone calls to supporting churches.

In the busyness of life, it can be difficult to pray diligently and regularly for missions work. The task can be aided by organizing a prayer group for your missionary; if you do this, be sure to let your missionaries know so they can be encouraged and maybe even Skype in during one of the prayer meetings.

2. Commit to regular financial support.

One-time donations are welcome, but regular support shows missionaries that you are committed to their ministry in the long haul. It also provides missionaries with a more consistent source of income, so they do not have to be overly concerned about whether they will be able to maintain their support level year to year. Most missionaries dread the prospect of being sent home to raise funds if their supporting churches or individual supporters drop them or forget to give.

Missionaries have a lot to worry about already—cultural and linguistic adaptation, running ministries with limited resources, resistance, persecution, harsh living environments, and more. Though support-raising might be a necessary reality, you can make the process easier for overseas Christian laborers by being consistent in your support. It's a shame that many people avoid going to the missions field, as the Great Commission mandates, because they fear support raising.

In Philippians 4:15-19, Paul commends a church that supported him financially when he was overseas:

When I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid again and again when I was in need. Not that I am looking for a gift, but I am looking for what may be credited to your account. I have received full payment and even more; I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Financially supporting missionaries not only blesses them—it also blesses you.

3. Help combat homesickness.

A simple care package can communicate a great deal. Ask your missionaries if there is anything they particularly miss from home—books, worship or sermon CDs, foods, spices, toys, games, or TV shows. If receiving mail is not possible for them but using the internet is, offer online goods like downloadable music credit, magazine subscriptions, or e-books.

4. Help missionaries during their "furloughs."

The term furlough can be deceiving because it suggests the missionary is taking time off or enjoying a long holiday. For this reason, some mission agencies such as ours dub this time as a "home assignment." Don't assume that "furloughs" are entirely restful for the missionary. In fact, many missionaries return home with a dose of reluctance, not because they don't love their home churches, but because of the cultural transitions and logistical hassles that "furloughs" entail.

We know that war-torn soldiers who return from tours of duty need special support. Recent statistics about the high suicide rate among U.S. troops remind us of this reality. Like returning soldiers, missionaries on "furlough" often return home similarly confused. Some might detect a widening emotional gap with friends back at home because they've traversed entire seasons of life apart. Some have suffered the death of relatives while they were overseas, resulting in a loss of intimacy in their family networks. Some have endured trauma overseas and might need counseling but cannot afford it at regular rates.

You can assist your missionaries during their "furloughs" in many tangible ways. You can help them acclimate by greeting them at the airport or by asking them intelligent questions about their life and ministry. You can volunteer to help them with housing or setting up a mobile phone. You can let them borrow vehicles or furniture. Since visiting home churches often requires a fair amount of travel, you can offer to help with childcare or donate your frequent flier miles. If you are a counselor or physician, consider offering your services free of charge. Finally, you can help spread the word of their return to others and keep up with what they might need throughout their "furlough." Befriend them; encourage your children to get to know theirs.

5. If you do want to visit the missionary overseas, be mindful of their point of view.

Sometimes, short-term missions trips are not as helpful to missionaries as vision trips, where people go overseas to acquaint themselves with an area they are committed to pray for and otherwise support long-term. People who visit the field with this mindset can then spread their passion for missions with churches at home and serve as long-term advocates for missionaries. 

If you would like to go overseas to visit a missionary or lead a short-term team, be sure to dialogue with the missionary beforehand and try not to bring to the table any preconceived notions about what you think would be helpful. Ask for the missionary's honest opinion about what would be best for them. Go with a clear mindset of serving and learning. Missionaries who have worked to build up a ministry over a period of years may not want advice from short-term visitors who are only in the country for a couple of days or weeks. Similarly, if a Chinese Christian visiting the United States for the first time immediately confronted a pastor about how the entire American church should be run, that person—no matter how well-meaning—would probably be disregarded.

Even so, visits from supporters and church representatives can be helpful. Once, when we were on the field, a pastor from our home church came to visit us. We wanted to show him our different ministries, but due to typhoons, we had to cancel most of our events. Still, the pastor remained flexible and even volunteered to help my husband mop up an area of our new gospel center that had flooded because of the torrential rain. One night, a local woman came to our house to chat, and it became evident that we would soon enjoy significant gospel conversation. My husband and the visiting pastor went upstairs and started to pray for us. The woman received Christ that night and became our first convert.

The pastor's visit encouraged us because he came with the goal to pray, watch, and learn. Throughout his stay he expressed compassion and concern for us, and he did not jump to making rash conclusions about anything he observed. The whole experience helped him better understand what our lives were like overseas.

6. Send a "medium-term" missionary to help be part of a long-term vision.

People willing to commit one to two years to the missions field usually have enough time to learn the local language and contribute to the ministry in a significant way. "Medium-term" missionaries can build meaningful relationships with locals and support long-term missionaries in a way that can help sustain a ministry in the long run.

For instance, one young woman came to Taiwan specifically to help a long-term missionary couple with the education of their special-needs son. Perhaps many people in the church have the ability to teach missionary kids, which could free up more missionaries to minister in completely unreached areas of the world that lack missionary schools. Other people might have the capacity to teach English overseas. Still others work well with children, are gifted in evangelism, or have professional skills that can be employed in a particular project.

If you know someone interested in "medium-term" missions, ask the missionaries you support about what kinds of opportunities might be available.

Little Act, Big Effect

I remember one point in the early stages of our ministry when we wanted to let local children play with American board games during our outreach events. After sending out a quick email to our supporters, many of them immediately offered to send us games. Having these supporter gifts on hand eventually helped us launch several children's ministries that led families to seek Christ.

"How did you get these games over here?" one curious local asked while watching her children play with the games.

"They're from Christians around the world who believe in the Good News so much that they sent us here to share it," I replied.

She smiled. "That's really moving."

Sometimes, little acts of support and commitment can go a long way.

Reclaiming a Pool Hall to Renew a Neighborhood

Beautiful story about what God is doing in Chicago. I love this guy and what he is doing. Truly inspirational. 

HT: By Faith

In a smoky pool hall in an undisclosed urban ghetto, Tom Cruise, playing a young billiards protégé in director Martin Scorsese’s 1986 film “The Color of Money,” bends over his cue and shoots impeccably, not only winning the admiration of his challengers but provoking their jealousy. Almost 20 years later, a young pastor takes a hammer to the walls of that same pool hall; blood, sweat, and prayers now at work transforming the once notorious pool hall at the corner of 64th and Cottage streets into a common ground — a haven for the downtrodden, the once-forgotten street kid, and the weary intellectual.

When Brad Beier Came to Town

On Sunday morning, July 15, 2012, the windows are flung open to let some breeze into a muggy library room at the University of Chicago’s Ida Noyes Hall. Ivy creeps along the building’s exterior and sneaks through the windows, as a roomful of congregants cluster for prayer during a church meeting. A group of young people — two African-American men, an African-American woman, and a Caucasian man — share prayer requests. One, an incoming chemistry graduate student, asks for prayer for her studies. Twenty-year-old Pierre Carr, wearing braids down his neck, tells the others he is going to school in the fall to become a chef, a future he couldn’t have imagined five years prior.

Growing up without a father in Woodlawn, one of South Side Chicago’s roughest neighborhoods, Carr didn’t have a lot of direction. His mother feared that her adolescent son was destined for a life of gang activity, jail, even premature death — paths that many of his friends would take in years to come.

Beginning in the 1950s, Woodlawn — like many urban American neighborhoods at the time — began to decline economically as the white middle class fled to the suburbs. With them went many businesses, although through the 1960s, Woodlawn’s 63rd Street was known for its jazz clubs, many just down the road from a certain well-frequented pool establishment. The deterioration continued through the ’70s,’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s, with the average household income hovering at just over $23,000.

In 2003 Brad Beier, a skinny, young, white pastor from Louisiana, showed up in Woodlawn with a basketball and words that offered hope to a few floundering teenage boys.

“At first, I thought he was a cop,” admits Tee Nimely, one of Carr’s close friends. But something about Beier eventually secured the boys’ trust. Maybe it was because he called them throughout the week to see how they were doing. Or because he didn’t give up on them. Or because he was the father figure they didn’t know they needed.

Louisiana-born Beier attended Louisiana Tech with the intention of becoming a doctor. But early in his college experience, he began serving as a youth minister at his college church, and by the time he graduated he was headed to Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, Miss.) to prepare to go abroad as a missionary. His wife, Shannon, on the other hand, had a passion for working with the poor a bit closer to home.

“We put our heads together,” Brad recalled, “and eventually God gave us this unified desire to stay in a city in America and [to] make sure we were in a very big city where there was lots of diversity and lots of opportunities to reach unreached people.”

After an apprenticeship with an urban church in Baltimore, the Beiers moved to Bethel Christian Church (PCA), a multiethnic church in Chicago, with the mandate to plant a church among students at nearby University of Chicago. Not the type to plant a church by the book, Beier also began working part time as the chaplain at a county jail and facilitating an aftercare ministry to men being released from prison. While developing relationships with undergraduate and Ph.D. students in Hyde Park, Brad was also getting to know the families of the men he had met in county jail; many lived in Woodlawn, just five blocks south of the university.

In the world of academia, he found skeptics, atheists, and some genuine believers. Some of each began trickling into the Sunday morning worship at the new church — dubbed Living Hope Church — that met in a university library room. In the culture of gangs and poverty, he met fatherless children, confused young men, and single moms just trying to make it. Some of them came, too.

Crossing 61st Street

It took Carr and Nimely a year or two before they came to church, but in the meantime they were hearing the gospel as part of a basketball ministry — a team that Beier had put together as a way to meet youth in the neighborhood. Here was a white guy from a privileged background who willingly moved his wife and four young daughters to a majority African-American area that most middle-class folks had fled long ago.

“In my life, he’s an example of what a man looks like — not just a man, a godly man who knows how to take care of his family,” says Nimely.

As the young men went through high school, some of their friends from the basketball team started falling off, joining gangs, using guns. One ended up in jail. Another ended up dead.

“When I lost one of my friends, that’s when my whole view changed,” Nimely reveals. “Everybody’s thinking that when you die you just go to heaven and everything’s OK.”

But Nimely wasn’t so sure. This uncertainty led him to accept Christ and to start hanging around the Living Hope community more often. At first, he was skeptical that he would have anything in common with Ph.D. students, but he soon got over that.

“You come to church with people who have degrees and resources. … [And you think] ‘OK, I don’t got that stuff; I don’t got that background. Will they think of me as just some street kid?’ But at Living Hope it don’t seem like that. You see people trying to build their relationship with Christ. You see their love for other people.”

Ph.D. biochemistry student Kathryn Scherpelz likes Nimely. She likes the hard questions he asks about faith. Before coming to Living Hope, the only place Scherpelz could have imagined meeting someone like him would have been at the hospital where she worked during medical school.

“In medical school, you come to regard Woodlawn as patients, like they’re an ‘other,’ and you treat them, and they get sick and get in gun fights,” she explains. Now they’ve become people and not just patients.

Both Kathryn and her husband, Peter, a graduate student in physics, have felt challenged and changed by the perspective they’ve discovered at Living Hope. Peter recently overheard someone at the university tell a newcomer never to go south of 61st Street — the line that separates Hyde Park from Woodlawn. He felt compelled to intervene. “I told [the man] it wasn’t that dangerous,” Scherpelz said. “There are a lot of worthwhile things and worthwhile people to get to know.”

And for that matter, the Scherpelzes have discovered there are just as many needs — albeit of a different sort — in the university culture. Spiritual apathy is primary among them. With dozens of traditional church buildings scattered across the historic campus, faith would appear to be booming. But, as Kathryn explains, many of these buildings house a smorgasbord of spiritual offerings — New Age religion and Christianity sprinkled together. “At its best [the university] is very open [to all spiritual things]. At its worst, it considers traditional Christianity as passé,” says Kathryn.

But every year a few atheists and agnostics join the Living Hope community, soon finding life truth and new life.

The Future of an Old Pool Hall

Several years ago, Beier began to feel the drain of not having a permanent building for the growing church. A tutoring and discipleship program Living Hope had built for children in Woodlawn was at the mercy of whatever local church would rent it space. A few times, they even got locked out of the library before church on Sunday mornings.

So Beier began poking around, looking for a place that Living Hope could call its own. He first noticed the empty storefront at 64th and Cottage in 2010. A big “Cash Loans” sign was painted along the side of the building, which had stood empty for several years. Beier didn’t know why the property was selling for $570,000. It seemed steep for a place that had once been “Chicago’s Finest Billiards,” a notorious local hangout that offered gambling on the first floor and prostitutes on the second. Maybe it was because “The Color of Money” had given it a reputation. Beier didn’t know. He just knew that it was the spot he wanted.

Through a providential turn of real estate fortune, the price plummeted, and in February 2011, Living Hope was able to purchase the property for just under $100,000.

During the past year, volunteers from churches and RUF campus ministries have poured in from across the country, donating time and effort to transform the pool hall into a church with a sanctuary, office space, plenty of room to run the children’s ministry, and four second-floor apartments that Living Hope plans to rent out for additional income.

Just nine years into Living Hope’s story, Beier is hopeful. He likes that when he looks out at his small congregation every Sunday, he sees black and white, young and old, seekers and growers. He sometimes grows weary of the transience that comes with college-student and low-income populations, but he’s seen a few folks stick around for the long haul and hopes more will follow suit.

Sometimes people advise him to find an easier calling in a safer neighborhood with a less transitory group. But for Beier, you don’t argue with a calling.

“We don’t disparage anybody who says they’d rather be a part of a more homogenous group, ’cause that’s fine. We do try to challenge people and say this is really the vision of God’s kingdom. … We’re all gonna be one family in heaven, so let’s get a taste of it!”

5 Things You Didn't Know About "Jane Roe"

Given that today is the 40th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I found this to be a rather interesting article about the real "Jane Roe". I especially like the point made at the end of # 5. 

HT: Justin Taylor

Today is the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the controversial Supreme Court ruling that progressives want to enshrine and conservatives want to overturn. Few rulings have been more consequential. According to Planned Parenthood’s Guttmacher Institute, 22% of all pregnancies now end in abortion, with 3 in 10 women terminating their pregnancy by the age of 45. There have been approximately 57 million legally induced abortions in the U.S. since 1973—nearly the current population of California and Texas combined.

Yet a recent Pew study found that 4 in 10 “Millennials” don’t even know that Roe v. Wade has to do with abortion. And even fewer today know the true story of the woman who started it all, the pseudonymous plaintiff “Jane Roe.” Here are five things you may not know about her, culled from interviews and profiles along with her sworn congressional testimony and memoirs.

(1) The name “Jane Roe” was created over beer and pizza.

In 1969 Norma was 21 years old, divorced, and pregnant for the third time. (The first two children were placed for adoption.) After seeking an abortion but finding out it was illegal, and then driving to an illegal clinic only to find it closed, adoption attorney Henry McCluskey referred her to two young lawyers in Dallas, Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee. Weddington (who had traveled to Mexico a couple of years earlier to have an abortion) was seeking a class-action lawsuit against the state of Texas in order to legalize abortion. It was an unlikely party at the corner booth of Columbo’s pizza parlor in Dallas: two recent law-school grads in business suits sitting across the table from a rough and uneducated homeless woman. The lawyers needed a representative for all women seeking abortions—one who was young, poor, and white. They just didn’t want her to cross state lines to get a legal abortion, or the case would be considered moot and dismissed. Without money and five months pregnant, Norma was the ideal candidate. After downing several pitchers of beer, they agreed on using the pseudonym “Jane Roe.” (“Wade” referred to Henry B. Wade, the attorney general of Dallas.)

(2) Jane Roe didn’t know the meaning of “abortion.” 

Weddington and Coffee told Norma that abortion just dealt with a piece of tissue, and that it was like passing a period rather than the termination of a distinct, living, and whole human organism. Abortion was a taboo topic in 1970, and Norma had dropped out of school at the age of 14. She knew that John Wayne movies talked about “aborting the mission,” so she thought it meant to “go back”—as in, going back to not being pregnant. She honestly believed “abortion” meant a child was prevented from coming into existence.

(3) Jane Roe never appeared in court.

Her lawyers drafted a one-page legal affidavit, which she signed but did not read. (Even today, she has not read it.) This was only the second time she would meet with her lawyers—and it turned out to be the last. She would not be called to testify and attended none of the trial. She found out about the Supreme Court ruling from the newspaper on January 23, 1973, just like the rest of the nation. Few on that day understood the implications of Justice Blackmun’s instruction that Roe v. Wade was to be read in conjunction with its companion case Doe v. Bolton, which effectively made abortion legal at any stage of pregnancy for any reason. As a result, the United States (with Canada) became the only Western country offering no legal protection for the unborn at any stage of the pregnancy.

(4) Jane Roe never had an abortion.

Norma had already given birth and placed the baby for adoption before the three-judge Texas panel ruled against her in May of 1970, long before the Supreme Court decision in January of 1973. She was in a committed lesbian relationship and would not become pregnant again. Abortion continued to be a part of her life, however. She went on to work in abortion clinics, holding the hands of women and offering reassurance as they terminated their pregnancies, and making appearances on the Roe anniversaries.

(5) Jane Roe became pro-life.

In 1995, while working at the clinic, Norma became haunted by the sight and sound of empty playgrounds in her neighborhood. Once teeming with kids, they now seemed deserted. And she began to see it was the result of what she once called “my law.” But the decisive change happened when she met Emily Mackey, a seven-year-old girl whose parents were protesting at the clinic where “Miss Norma” worked. Emily, who had almost been aborted herself, befriended Norma, showing genuine interest and love, giving her hugs and inviting her to church. Through the influence this young girl’s combination of truth and grace, along with those who shared the gospel of Jesus with her, Norma not only became convinced of the pro-life position but also converted to Christianity.

Norma McCorvey now says that “Jane Roe has been laid to rest.” Both sides in America’s most contentious debate have claimed her at one point, and both have had reason to be disappointed. But for evangelicals—the demographic most committed to overturningRoe—the case for protecting the smallest and most defenseless members of the human race does not rest with the testimony of a single individual. It does not even rest on biblical revelation; moral philosophers have pointed out that the differences between a fetus in utero and an infant outside the womb—size, location, degree of dependency, and level of development—are morally irrelevant when determining a person’s right to life.

On this fortieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, evangelicals would do well to remember that we must not only labor to protect the unborn, but to continue reaching out with assistance and love and the good news of grace to the Norma McCorveys of the world—broken women who feel they have no other place to turn.

A Call For Christian Imagination

A great article from Relevant magazine. Check it out.

A Call For Christian Imagination

Losing Our Religion: The Growth of the 'Nones'

Here is a recent article from NPR about the increasing number of people who no longer affiliate themselves with any religion. There have been several articles written about this Pew Research study regarding the increasing 'none' population, and thought I would finally post one here.

I'm curious if anyone has any thoughts regarding the article and this steady trend in America.

Check it out: Losing Our Religion: The Growth of 'Nones'

Personally, I do not think this is a bad thing. For one, I think this trend allows for a deeper distinction between mere 'religion' and authentic Christianity. As the article points out, I believe one of the main reasons for this trend away from religion is that people (especially younger) are tired of the cold, irrelevant 'religion' pushed by older generations. It is a rebellion of sorts. For many, it is a rebellion against a religion that stifles humans by imposing moral agendas and political platforms. In this sense, those rebelling often see organized religion as nothing more than a man-made obstacle to progress. I would agree with some aspects of this rebellion, specifically, that it is not a good thing when Christianity primarily becomes a moral movement or a political platform. Sadly, many people see Christianity as nothing more than moral conservatives, and for that reason, many people do not want to associate with Christianity.

The problem here is that what most people think Christianity is (mostly through the media), is not authentic Christianity. I don't think this rebellion is that bad because it really does open up a door to show people, in word and deed, what the Gospel actually is. It is so much more than a moral system. It is so much more than organized religion. Rather, it is the story of all humanity that addresses our deepest problem; namely our human condition. It takes the reality of our brokenness, pain, insatiable lives, and it puts it into the only context of life that makes sense. It confronts the fact that life is not what it is supposed to be. It confronts this fact, not with a political agenda, or a technique for improving our behavior. No. God confronts this fact by getting to the heart of the problem. He sent his Son to give us completely new life. He came to give us life as it was originally intended. He came that we could fulfill our innate human purpose; to know Him and be known by Him for eternity.

All I have for now are those random thoughts, but I'd love to hear what other people think about the article, or other ones like it. 

What is Biblical Justice?

An article from Relevant Magazine written by Tim Keller. This is pure gold. I'm pretty sure it is part of a chapter from Keller's Generous Justice. 

Here is the link to the original article.

• Tim Keller on one of the Bible's most misunderstood ideas.Facebook109
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