In This Issue: An Interview with Carol Davis
- INTERVIEW – Carol Davis, on Being a Mission Activator
- SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION – A Stamp in Your Passport and a Ring on Your Finger
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Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.
INTERVIEW: Carol Davis, on Being a Mission Activator
By Shane Bennett
I’ve spent much of the day today with a good friend, Carol Davis. In fact, as I write, she’s wrapping up a great lesson for my Perspectives class. If you get a chance to hang out with Carol, by all means, take it. You’ll walk away challenged, enlightened, and filled with hope. (You may also feel like selling all your stuff and moving to Yemen, so hang out with Carol with care!)
Here’s a question I posed to Carol, and her response, as well as a couple of take-aways from the day.
Q: What gets you out of bed in the morning these days?
“Number one, the latent capacity of the church. People don’t realize how powerfully God could use their lives with just a little intentionality. I’m sad that we don’t know how to be intentional about what God is about. I see such capacity. And it’s not that people aren’t willing, they just don’t know.
“Second, lately I’ve been understanding more that the harvest is ready now somewhere and there aren’t enough laborers. How do we watch for the signals that the harvest is ready? Or will be soon? How do we get laborers ready before it’s harvest time, keeping our eye on what God’s doing?
“I love how we’ve become more diligent in our prayer. We have good focus, are developing good habits, but we don’t get ready for the answers. We’re getting the prayer thing, but we don’t think about the next step. For instance, most of us are not helping people acquire languages or otherwise preparing God’s people for specific fields.
“My grandson who has some baseball skill is getting letters from colleges – as a freshman in high school. Most of our kids, if they are thinking about their gifts and abilities, are trying to figure out what’s ahead and what they might like to do with their lives. They do this in isolation, not in light of the big picture. They don’t think enough about how God has shaped them and what that means regarding their contribution to his purposes. It’s about positioning.
“Churches should be the biggest centers for language acquisition. Are you praying for God’s kingdom to grow in India? Brilliant. Teach your kids to speak Hindi.”
Take-away #1: Activate instead of mobilize
“My mobilization, which I prefer to call activation, really just consists of discovering what God is doing in people. Wondering with them what his intention might be, and then building bridges to make it happen.”
Take-away #2: Catch the 10:02 virus
Carol shared about a friend in Denver who ran out of ideas to bring church planters to Denver, Colorado. In desperation he decided to simply, with his friends, pray the prayer that Jesus gave the disciples in Luke 10:2, “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.”
To remind themselves to do this, they each set an alarm to go off at 10:02 am. The idea has caught hold and now people on all continents are praying at 10:02 am local time for God to send out laborers. Got a mobile phone? If you’re willing, join me in catching the 10:02 virus. I’m setting an alarm right now. (If you do this, I’d appreciate you letting me know.)
Editor’s note: You can get more Carol Davis by downloading a webinar she taught in February for The Mission Exchange. They are giving this one away for free because it had some technical problems. Her topic was Globalizing the Professional and Business Capacity of the Church (just search on “Carol Davis”).
NOTE, NOV. 2010: Sorry, looks like this one is no longer in the TME store! link removed
SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION
A Stamp in Your Passport and a Ring on Your Finger
Last month I promised you a column on Mobilization Matrimony (or, “how to find someone who’s passionate about both the Fulani and a future with you.”) After thinking about this a bit (and repenting of vain promises!) I decided it might fit better as a long Subversive Mob item; stretching it out to make an entire column might be overselling the idea.
Years ago, Roberta Winter, the now late wife of mobilization icon Ralph Winter and the woman who did much of the heavy lifting that established the U.S. Center for World Mission, gave sage matrimonial advice to some global-minded youth.
“If you want to go to Boston, you don’t stay at home. You go to the train station. And not just the train station, you go to the platform where trains will likely be departing to Boston.”
Her point, of course, is that missions-minded youth will find other mission minded potential mates-for-life by hanging out where people like that tend to hang out.
Reckoning that it’s smart to say the same things Roberta Winter said, I’ve recently been telling the story of how God worked to connect my wife and me. If you knew my Ann, you’d agree that it had to be a work of God that someone like her would stoop to marry someone like me!
We met in the context of training for a summer project in Turkey. I had reached a place in life where my strong sense was that I’d be a better person all around if I had a wife. I was looking (not rabidly, but looking) for someone whose passion for the world was in the same zone as mine. Ann and I noticed each other early on in our training and pretty much fell hard for each other during our summer in Izmir.
We didn’t date that summer though. Our team policy was explicit, “You may not date people on the team.” I assume it was implied that we shouldn’t date Turks, but the former was in bold print, so we wanted to obey. Shortly after our return, we began to pursue our relationship with vigor, were married a year later, and are now raising five kids whom we think of as our own people group.
I tell you this for you and for the young people you influence. Some of them are going overseas this summer. Some of those will have this thought flit through their minds as they prepare, “Hey, maybe I’ll meet my spouse this summer.” If they’ve grown up in a strict church, their next thought might be, “Dang, I can’t go on this trip. I have mixed motives. My desires are not pure.”
Balderdash. Claptrap. Drivel. Piffle. Poppycock. Rigmarole. Rubbish. Trash. Twaddle. And untrue!
I delight to tell people this: “If your only motivation for participating in a summer project is to secure a spouse, talk it over with your pastor. However, if you find this motivation in the midst of other noble motivations, don’t despair. One: God knows your heart. Two: Few of us are entirely single-minded. Three: If you’re praying for a mate (and believe God gives fish and not snakes!), you should put yourself in places where you’d likely expect God to answer those prayers.
“The sort of person you want to marry is not spending this summer chasing great waves around the globe. They’re not sitting on their mom’s couch mastering their latest Wii game. They’ll spend this summer holding the hand of a dying AIDS victim in Calcutta. They’ll spend the summer drinking tea with Muslims in the Middle East. If you want to marry someone like that, be there this summer.”
I believe this is godly, true and logical. Anecdotally, I know it worked for me.
Editor’s note: You can find more subversive ideas in the Practical Mobilization archives. By the way, deadlines for this [Northern Hemisphere] summer’s mission trips are passing fast, but check out shorttermmissions.com. If you can’t get away, you could also trade in camping out on the couch for brushing up your Hindi, right?
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