Thursday, March 31, 2016

Life in the US

By Sara:

In the midst of our presentations and visits to churches and supporters, and along with the work we have been doing preparing for teaching in and moving to Kenya, we have also been making the most of our time in the US.  There are things we can't experience in Uganda/Kenya, which we are enjoying here.  First of all, we got to experience one small blizzard in Michigan and I went out and walked in the snow at the nature center with my dad.  We found this amazing imprint (probably from an owl) in the snow:


Of course, some of us have enjoyed winter more than others...



But we have also done some less extreme fun winter activities together:


We are getting to know our nieces and nephews in person and are doing our best to fill their minds with books:


We live with our parents most of the time and try to do some cooking and chores for them as well as getting quality time in.  Hopefully it makes everyone happy!




I am enjoying cooking food with ingredients not found in Uganda!  While doing so, I noticed that ovens here are really big.  It's pretty amazing to be able to fit two cookie sheets into an oven at the same time.


I even brought out my inner nerdiness (which wasn't very difficult) and celebrated Pi Day (March 14th, i.e. 3.14) with my parents.


Thursday, March 17, 2016

Book Recommendation - The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

By Anthony:

I recently finished this autobiography (testimony) by Rosaria Butterfield called - The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor's Journey into Christian Faith.  Butterfield has gotten a lot of press recently for her amazing story of transformation, and I'm so glad to have finally read her book.  I want to heartily recommend it to you.

Although I think her story gets the most attention because she was a practicing lesbian before coming to Christ, the book is really not about homosexuality.  It's a story about God's grace and God's power to choose whoever he wants for salvation.  Butterfield writes with honesty, bluntness, and she is not afraid to criticize the church, while at the same time clearly she deeply appreciates the Church.   I don't agree with her on everything for sure, but her story made me put down the book and talk to God and tell him how great he is.  That's reason enough to read the book.

Here are my points in brief for why you should read this book.
  • It is short and really easy to read.  She writes well.  It is interesting.
  • It gives us a powerful example of how to do evangelism well.  It shows a picture of patient, loving, long-term evangelism with a focus on hospitality and dialogue.  Yet it shows the importance of Christians not being afraid to tell the truth about both God's judgment on sin, and also the good news of the Gospel.  But even with the powerful lessons about how to share our faith and love people well, it powerfully shows that our conversion is ultimately up to God, it is he who enters our lives, he who changes our hearts, and he who chooses us.
  • It crushes the false prosperity gospel.  Butterfield says that coming to Christ was like a train-wreck in her life.  While she gained God's love, salvation, and the real meaning in life, she lost everything she had before - her promising career as a professor in gay studies, friendships, community, her lesbian partner, etc.  We need to count the cost if we want to be Christ's disciple.
  • The book shows the importance and difficulty and hope of sanctification.  Few books have so clearly shown the all encompassing reality of sanctification, that submitting to God means submitting everything to him, no matter how difficult.  Our relationship to God changes everything in our lives (including our sexuality, for all of us).  But her story also shows how sanctification is a long and often very painful process.  And yet to me it is such a hopeful picture of sanctification.  This woman who was a radical secularist and lesbian is now living her life for Christ, writing books to edify the Church, and is married to a pastor.
  • This book will help the Church know how to better love gay people in our communities, as she offers some helpful criticisms.  Yet the book also helps us to stand firm on the truth of God's Word and not to be ashamed even if it offends people.
  • Other topics that she muses about in the book that you may or may not find interesting:  adoption and foster parenting, worship and the regulative principle, feminism, university studies, and tolerance/intolerance.

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Three things the CRC can learn from PAG Uganda

By Anthony:

Sometimes when we teach, it’s easy to forget that students also have knowledge to offer to us.  Through my World Renew position in Uganda, I had the privilege of teaching pastors from Pentecostal Assemblies of God churches (PAG).  While these pastors had an urgent need for biblical and theological training, they regularly taught me more about how to obey God’s Word in a practical way.  I want to share with you three of the things I have learned, and am still learning, that I think the CRC (Christian Reformed Church, which is my denomination) could also learn from the PAG Christians in Uganda.

1.      Prayer and Fasting – Where we lived, the PAG churches do not take prayer lightly.  They pray for their leaders, their families, and for the expansion of the Gospel through their missions.  Each local PAG church has a day of prayer and fasting once a month, which usually includes an all-night prayer vigil.  Then the main “assembly,” which is a whole group of local PAG churches together, has another day of prayer and fasting every month.  In addition, every January, the whole assembly has what they call a Prayer Cloud.  They do partial prayer and fasting for 7 days, which means no eating or drinking from 9am to 6pm.  Then the following week, for up to 7 days, (depending on the person), they have no water or food at all!  Before coming here I did not think this was medically possible.  But this is what some of them do in actuality, even if it is hard for us to believe.

Now, I don’t think I’m quite ready to fast from water for 7 days!  But imagine with me if all of our CRC churches took prayer and fasting more seriously, following PAG’s example.  How much would the spiritual vitality of our churches change?  How would God use such prayer for the expansion of the Gospel?  Would we more clearly perceive the Holy Spirit’s guidance concerning the pressing and complicated issues facing our denomination today?


2.      Church discipline – While I don’t want to exaggerate and say that PAG does church discipline perfectly, (I have heard of times it wasn't carried out well), I want to say that they at least do it, and it seems to work well most of the time.  They actually follow passages like Matthew 18:15-19 and 1 Cor. 5:11.  I heard of people being put under church discipline on a regular basis, and some of my friends there have gone through church discipline themselves.  But through the discipline, they repented of the sin that they were living in, and later were enfolded back into the church.  I have been in some very moving worship services during which the congregation celebrated people returning to the church after a period of church discipline.  In such an atmosphere, while unrepentant sin might still exist in secret, generally Christians learn to take sin very seriously and they encourage each other in living in obedience to Christ.

There is some cultural difference from North America in that Ugandans may be less likely to view churches with a consumer mindset.  They deeply value the community and fellowship of their church, so they are willing to come back to a church after being under church discipline, even braving the potential social stigma. Whereas, if a North American Christian goes under church discipline, they would be more likely to simply choose a new church.  But even with this strong cultural challenge of consumerism, we in the CRC must try to get back to doing church discipline without fear of offending people, and with love and gentleness, if we are going to have healthy CRC churches. In North America, there seems to much less thought given to holding our brothers and sisters accountable to God's Word concerning issues such as marital breakdown, sexual immorality, addictive behaviors, and greed.  Let’s learn from our PAG brethren, as after all, church discipline is one of the three traditional marks of what we call the “True Church.”


3.      Church planting – I am continually amazed at how dedicated PAG is to church planting.  In my city’s region alone (where we used to live), the head pastor of the local assembly of PAG churches has calculated that there is about one new church every 2 years.  About half of the main churches have raised up a new church plant in recent years and they are still helping them to grow, training up new leaders, and building new buildings.  These were done without full-time church planters. There is a whole month each year dedicated to missions in the assembly.  Crusades are common as well as going door to door.   In addition, every local PAG church has a designated evangelism leader, who leads the church in planning outreaches and trains the members in how to share their faith.

It is evident in PAG that church planting is understood to be essential to the life of every local church.  It is not viewed, as it is in many places in North America, as only the work of a special ministry within a denomination, or only the work of full-time paid church planters.  In PAG Uganda, the entirety of each local church is mobilized for ongoing outreach and the spreading of the Gospel, both to people a few kilometers away and sometimes to other tribes and regions.  It also is interesting to note that the evangelists who lead the congregations in starting new churches, do so mainly on a volunteer basis.  Even most of the senior pastors of established churches are only given between $2 and $4 per month by the congregation, though city pastors are given a fair amount more.  Pastors have to work at other jobs and in their gardens in order to sustain their families.  Pastoral ministry, and the work of spreading the Gospel, is not done for financial gain or career improvement, but is done as a sacrifice.  As the pastors lead in this sacrificial mission, the rest of the church members follow.  My hope for the CRC is that we can capture this vision, of sacrificing in mission together as congregations, rather than leaving this work to a professionally paid few.  What a difference we would see in God’s Kingdom and the growth of the CRC.

I write this out of deep love and respect for my denomination, and my hopes for how we can grow when we are willing to learn from brothers and sisters across the ocean.

Thursday, March 3, 2016

Fundraising Request

Thank you to all of you who so faithfully supported us while we were in Uganda!  We request that you please continue to support us as we go on to Kenya.  It is only by your help that we can continue in this ministry.  In partnership, God uses us all together to do his Kingdom work.

Our budget for working in Kenya includes $35,000 in one-time startup costs (mainly purchasing a vehicle and furnishing our house).  Then the yearly budget is $60,096 a year (which covers our salary, travel, and all of our ministry expenses).   This new budget includes support we are receiving right now, while in the US, to cover our living and travel expenses as we visit all of you around the country.  Therefore, we would appreciate your continued support even right now before we go to Kenya in July.

We have calculated generally what we expect to financially receive per year from the supporting churches and monthly donors we have already.  We have concluded that if individual monthly donors and churches give exactly as they did while we were in Uganda, we will be around $23,000 short of our yearly budget for Kenya.

So we are asking you to please consider becoming a new monthly supporter for us.

$23,000 comes out to around 19-20 new monthly supporters who are each giving $100 per month.

Although this is a large gap, we trust in God to provide, just as he always has in the past by blessing us abundantly through so many generous people and churches!

If you want to give online you can do so through World Renew's website.  It is the link at the top of our list of links to the right.