Engaging Culture as a Faithful Missionary

Imagine for a moment that you had perfect understanding of the Bible.  Not only that, but imagine that you had the ability to perfectly interpret God’s word.  Being a passionate follower of Christ, you form a plan to move to the other side of the world in order to share God’s word with others.  In God’s providence, you’re able find a few churches that are willing to work together to send you to the
mission field.

So here’s where you’re at:  You have a perfect understanding of
God’s word and the ability to explain what God meant with 100 % accuracy, and you have a network of churches working together with absolute unity. 

Then you arrive at your final destination. You begin your ministry by faithfully unfolding the truths of God’s word.  You continue to do this daily.  As time goes on, people begin to contact you from back home, and you fill them in on your faithful teaching ministry. But you also express a slight degree of disappointment due to a lack of response—people are not growing and changing. Ultimately, you determine that this is just a difficult mission field, and you simply need to persevere. Years pass by and still you continue ministering faithfully. In fact, you end up spending the rest of your life perfectly explaining the word of God to these people.

This sounds like a wonderful scenario. It seems like the perfect use of a talent that has clearly been given to you by God. But let me introduce a slight twist. You have been carefully teaching the word of God in English. But the people you spent your life ministering to don’t speak English. You have been completely faithful and entirely accurate in your teaching, but you have been speaking in a language that the people simply cannot understand.

With that extra bit of information, we would all agree that this potentially perfect scenario turns out to be disastrous. Rather than an example of a faithful ministry, it becomes an example of a wasted life and a misuse of God’s gift. We would all be quick to say that this example is ludicrous.

But here’s the point: you may not be dealing with people who live overseas. You may even be ministering to people who speak English. But are you really speaking the same language? Don’t be too quick to say yes. Have you invested any time in learning the “language” of the culture in which you live? How much time do you spend listening to the people around you? How do they view the world around them? What are their hopes and fears? What do they believe about God and life and death?

Only when we understand the language and worldview of the people living around us can we effectively speak truth into their lives. Only then can we be faithful missionaries to the mission field in which God has placed us.

“I Will Build My Church”

Over the last few months I have been gripped with Jesus’ statement in Matthew 16:18, “I will build my church and the power of death will not overpower it.” I haven’t been able to get away from this proclamation and it has echoed in my mind day after day. Jesus was in essence saying, “My church is an unstoppable force!” (and no, I have never read McManus’ book) This undeserving group of people who were graced by the Father to understand that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (v. 16), would be assembled in such a way that nothing (very bold word) would stop them from fulfilling the purposes of God. Nothing!

The first night I began to think through this, my wife had gone to a movie with some friends and I had put the kids to bed, and I was left silent with this thought. I stared out my window overwhelmed with awe at being included into this movement. Todd Nighswonger, one of a few billion people to walk this planet since the dawn of time, was given the grace to understand the greatest message since the Fall and the pleasure to be involved in an unavoidable finale that God has been orchestrating since eternity past.

As I sat captivated in my thoughts, a really obvious question snuck into my mind: “If this God ordained body is so ‘unstoppable,’ then why does the church seem so ‘stoppable’ in the U.S.?”

After floating in the clouds of my euphoria, this thought brought me quickly back to earth (with a thud!). What would happen if you removed all of the money, programs, air conditioned/heated buildings, extravagant children’s and youth ministries, tight worship bands, expensive sound systems, worship “expressions” (I still haven’t figured out that one), Christian books, blogs, podcasts, cheesy lingo…? What if all we had were a few Bibles and some people?

A couple of years ago, I took a Roman Catholic friend of mine out for coffee to discuss the ills of the Roman Catholic faith. We talked about various Church Fathers, creeds, councils, etc., but in the end he was convinced that the Roman Catholic Church was the “one true church.” As a parting shot I left him with this statement, “Do you honestly believe that as Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross, everything the Roman Catholic Church has become is what Jesus envisioned? St. Peter’s Basilica? Vatican City? The Roman Catholic liturgy? All of that is what he died for?”

I sat back in my chair smug, thinking I had the last shot to part on. Little did I know that he was going to respond in like manner: “You think Jesus had in mind what the Conservative Evangelical Church has become? Come on!”

Tonight I sat quietly in my chair thinking to myself those same words…“Come on!”

As I write this, I don’t remember if it was frustration or disappointment, but that night I picked-up my Bible and read those words out of Matthew again and again: “I will build my church…” After about four or five deep breaths, I was reminded that in spite of the mess we have created, it was so good to know that God will build his church.

by: Pastor Todd Nighswonger

Rejoice in the Lord Always

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. (Phillipians4:4)

Try to remember back to when you first put your trust in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. What was that feeling like? Was it freeing? Did you feel like nothing else really mattered?

Oh the day that we first believed. The truth of the Gospel washed us clean of all our iniquities. We were freed from the bondage of sin. We are “new creations” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and are called to live in such a way that demonstrates our faith in this truth. We are called to be “the salt and light” in a world where darkness is so prevalent (Matthew 5:13). We are tasked with living in the world but not of the world.

As Christians we need to be aware that we are living amongst a watching world. This should not be the reason that we rejoice but it should be a catalyst. We need to rejoice because of the grace and mercy that our Lord showed to us. We need to remember that when we do rejoice it will cause the watching world to wonder. They will wonder how we can rejoice when there are so many uncertainties
in the world.

We rejoice because we know how our story ends. We can rejoice because we are Heaven focused. We rejoice because the God of this universe loved us so much that He sent His Son to die on a cross. We rejoice because His Son, Jesus, rose again. We rejoice because those of us who are saved will spend an eternity with Him. We rejoice because if God is for us who can be against us?
(Romans 8:31)

by: Pastor Steve Doucette