In This Issue: You, Your Kids, and the Whole Wide World
- FEATURE: You, Your Kids, and the Whole Wide World
- SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION: Awesome Opportunities
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FEATURE: You, Your Kids, and the Whole Wide World
When the idea of moving our family to Europe first began to germinate in my mind years ago, I faced a personal road block. I could imagine us learning to buy food and get around in a new town. I could envision building redemptive relationships with Muslims from Turkey and Morocco. I could even visualize speaking to Dutch churches, inviting them to engage their Muslim neighbors with kindness and care. But there was one thing I could not imagine: The flight across the Atlantic with four little kids.
Couldn’t do it. Like an army veteran whose mind will not let him mentally return to the battlefield, my mind would not let the pictures form. I’d flown with babies and little kids before, sometimes my own, many times not my own. The stories stand-up comedians tell are true. You can’t fly on the same plane with little kids and be happy at the same time. With our four kids, all under eight years old, the eight-hour flight from Detroit to Amsterdam would feel like a week … in a workhouse … in Dickensian London.
Turns out God’s grace even sometimes covers my fears: A good friend offered to fly us on “buddy passes” which came with the blessed proviso that no more than three could be used on any given flight. I ended up flying with two kids on one day, followed by Ann with the rest of the tribe the next day.
Perhaps you share my trepidation. Maybe you’ve wondered if you should position your family in a more cross-cultural situation. But if you even think of moving your sweet spouse and dear little ones to some exotic locale like Llahsa, Tibet; Lagos, Nigeria; or Louisville, Kentucky, your breathing gets a little shallow and you sweat. This is not without reason: There are a million questions and a million things that could go wrong. And let’s face it: Most of us stay at home. We eat the same food. Watch the same TV shows. And we wonder why we don’t see God at work in our lives.
If, however, you’re feeling a nudge from God to follow Jesus outside of “everyone-is-like-me” land, here’s something to consider.
Think in terms of cultural, rather than geographic, distance.
Time was, if you were American but wanted your kids to grow up among people from a variety of backgrounds, your choices were New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or another country. Happily – and I’m serious about that adverb – we now live in a day in which many cities, both large and small, are home to people from all over. In her brilliant book, The Middle of Everywhere, Mary Pipher writes winsomely about the immigrant-driven cultural transformation of her town: Lincoln, Nebraska. “I used to tell people I lived in the middle of nowhere. Now I say I live in the middle of everywhere.”
In another sweet and sober story, Outcasts United, writer Warren St. John recounts the valiant efforts of a Jordanian immigrant to launch a soccer league for the refugees who did not fit into established leagues in Clarkston, GA, USA. Along the way, St. John also chronicles the transformation of this sleepy, deep South community into a bustling global village, a real-world Epcot Center just outside of Atlanta.
I mentioned Louisville above to illustrate this dynamic. Can you get more American than Louisville? Home to the Kentucky Derby, the Louisville Slugger, and Kentucky Fried Chicken! Yet tens of thousands of refugees have been placed in or moved to Louisville in recent years. Move your family to Louisville and you could shop at Walmart, drink coffee at Starbucks, speak English (with just a slight accent), and put your kids in school alongside kids from Bosnia, Burma, Somalia, and Iraq.
In Acts 17:26 Paul said that, “from one man [God] made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.” Essentially, God decides who lives when and where. Paul goes on to say, “God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
God has brought immigrants and refugees to the world’s cities to give them a chance at life. Certainly this includes a relatively safe life, free from the various types of persecution they fled. But it also means life of a deeper and longer variety: life in Christ. They are here so that they might reach out for God. And we need to be there in these neighborhoods so that when they do reach out for God, we can say, “Hey, I’ve met him. I’ll be happy to introduce you.”
While I’m all for taking our kids to places a little more exotic than Louisville (London or Kuala Lumpur come to mind), many of us can’t do it. And while some of us would like to blame it on our husbands or wives, we’re really pretty reluctant ourselves. Kindly, our God has given us opportunity just down the road. Would you like to live among, or have your kids grow up among, people from all over? Would you like to introduce Jesus to people who are reaching out for him? People who live nearby, but have never heard?
Consider opportunities to raise your kids in a salad-bowl city in your own country. The in-laws will bless you that a Christmas visit to the grandkids doesn’t require a passport.
SUBVERSIVE MOBILIZATION: Awesome Opportunities
One of my favorite things on the planet is teaching Lesson 15 of the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course. Lesson 15 is the final class, the send off, the launch. Next week I get to do three of these. I’m pretty jazzed. I want to offer the students some great opportunities to make their lives count in the world. Actually, I’m looking for opportunities that will make their heads spin, their hearts race, and their imaginations ignite.
Just to seed the cloud, a couple of the opportunities I’ve been talking about lately are: (1) staffing a hospital in a “wild west” part of South Asia, and (2) welcoming refugees as they stream over the border from Libya to Tunisia.
Assuming hearts yielded to God, a good match, and proper motivation: What are some of the coolest, most timely, strategic, awesome opportunities for young lions (and old) to connect with God’s purposes for the nations?
Toss ’em in the comments section (being mindful of security concerns). Just maybe some passionate disciple from northeast Indiana will call you next week to see about signing up.
Shane Bennett has served in missions mobilization since 1987, much of his energy going to recruiting, training, and sending short-term teams. He’s been on research teams in Bangkok, Bombay, and Turkey. He coauthored Exploring the Land, a guide to researching unreached peoples, and has written numerous articles.
Shane now works as a public speaker for Frontiers and is part-time missions pastor at Union Chapel. He and his wife, Ann, have five school-aged children. They live and work in Indiana.
For those of us with college-age kids, I’d also be interested in some conversation and resources for navigating how to go to the mission field without them – getting them settled to live independently, yet in touch and supported from afar.
Good question, Brad. We’re in that boat as well. Anyone with a success story to share?
Here’s a great opp from an MCat reader:
Move to a small city in central China that has recently been (nicely)
developed for tourism and start a coffee house with an English corner. A
very small team is living and working in this area to reach one of the Miao
UPGs. For more information, contact: [email protected].
What could be more strategic and awesome than getting the Word of God into people’s heart language so they can understand Him?! That thought motivated our colleague to invest 20 years of her life helping a team of local-language speakers translate the New Testament into their West Africa language. While training to continue with translation of the Old Testament, she was killed by a bomb in Jerusalem. The grieving team is asking, “Who will take her place?” Might God be sending you? Contact me through the editor.
One of our goals is to transform Mexican churches from receiving churches to sending churches. We in YUGO Ministries are training and sending Mexican youth to their own neighborhoods first. Many have also gone to Central and South America, Cuba and Spain to share the Gospel. They are excited to learn that they can have a role in reaching the world. Most of Mexico is not the war zone reported in the news. We need all the help we can get to help mobilize the Mexican Church.
Though distant cross-cultural outreach ministry (old term: Missions) is often the strategy push, I would also advocate for INTERNATIONALS WHO LIVE AMONG US. Few will venture overseas—how about teaching English in China or South Korea to friends in the North), but most Perspectives graduates will stay at home. God has brought the internationals of the world to the doorstep of every church in America. Challenge them to engage in deliberate cross-cultural outreach to at least nine different groups of Internationals who live among us: Students, visitors, refugees, business people, military, ethnic communities, illegal aliens, MKs, seafarers (if you’re near the sea!).
Incidentally, ERI has a series of essays on this subject: http://www.eri.org/publications
Here’s another cool opp: “We’re looking for a starter, an entrepreneurial couple or team to be a catalytic Strategy Team for a cluster of 10 UPGs representing around 8 million people in Southeast Asia. Some work is in process for some of the UPGs in this cluster but most have no scripture in their language and several have no believers, no church and no one trying to reach them (unengaged). This team would need to work with local believers as well as mobilize extraordinary prayer, figure out ways to abundantly sow the Gospel and generally apply all the best-practices and CPM principles.” Contact Pete at [email protected] for more info.
Wow, Jenny, thanks for that challenge. May God raise up ten to fill her shoes.
Leonard, what a great opportunity. I’m glad to hear about your mobilization efforts. May God be pleased to use your Mexican students in wonderful ways.
Neal, brilliant, as usual. Thanks for emphasizing the gift God has given by bringing “the nations to our neighborhoods, the ends of the earth to the end of the block.” (Thanks to Bob Blincoe for that line. http://bobblincoe.wordpress.com/)