In This Issue: Interview with a Church-planting Team Leader
- INTERVIEW – A Team Leader’s Journey: One Man’s Path to Cross-Cultural Ministry
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Practical Mobilization by Shane Bennett is published once a month.
Dear Readers,
What do you hope will result from your mobilization efforts? For me, I want to see families who love Jesus living (thriving even) among people who have never met someone who loves Jesus. If I helped them start the journey or provided a little care along the way, a timely warning or a bit of direction, well, that feels pretty sweet.
In this month’s column I chat with a young man who recently joined Frontiers and moved with his family to India where they’re building a business and knitting themselves to their community. Following this new team leader’s comments, I’ll share some thoughts and questions about what we as mobilizers can learn from his journey.
Cheers,
Shane
INTERVIEW – A Team Leader’s Journey: One Man’s Path to Cross-Cultural Ministry
Q: What events or experiences pointed you toward your current way of life?
I have always loved the “other.” As long as I can remember, I was interested in meeting people from other places and trying new foods. I enjoyed traveling, not just because it was so different, but I felt like I was at home as I discovered new people and places.
My time in the military was pivotal. I was deployed to Kuwait and Turkey in 1994 and 1996. I was a believer but didn’t have a sense of my present calling while there. I did, however, meet Muslims for the first time and God touched my heart with how these particular people see their world. (See Note #1)
I took Perspectives on the World Christian Movement in 2001. My life was truly changed by this experience. It was so fun and worth every minute. Every night I would come home with a new plan and freak out my wife. (See Note #2)
Q: What about the context in which you grew up pointed you this direction? What pointed you away?
I grew up in a Bible-believing, missions kind of church. But I didn’t come to Christ really until high school after four years of genuine rebellion and run-ins with the law.
Then I met a guy who had converted to Islam. Every day for four months we would eat our lunch in the library and share out of our holy books. Even though we got mixed up in all kinds of conversion language, we genuinely sought to understand the other and appreciated having a person who feared God and could talk about it.
On the other hand, my folks almost never talked about missions, everyone in our church had skin the same color, and we lived in a town where you hardly even heard Spanish being spoken. (See Note #3)
Q: Describe two or three people who had significant influence on you.
Shawn Moreland, who’s now a campus pastor somewhere in Missouri, had significant impact on my life. Late in high school I joined his evangelism team who shared their faith each weekend on the main drag of my little town. I’ll never forget the times of prayer in the morning as we sought God, then the rush of being out there on Friday night acting on what we heard in prayer. Shawn was very influential in my life in those three months. We hardly stay in touch but I deeply respect him to this day.
Keith Green. Even though I never met him, and his music was ten years old by the time I came to Christ, Keith challenged me to live a holy, focused, God-centered life.
Henri Nouwen and his focus on spiritual leadership have shaped me in positive ways. I find his writing will light a candle in my heart that I revisit throughout the day. As I reach out to the world, Nouwen reminds me to keep moving toward the inner life. (See Note #4)
Q: Describe a challenge or two along the way to India or since you’ve arrived. How has your “call” come into play in such situations?
This has been a wild, four-year road for our family. Rarely roses and sweet tea! We’ve experienced everything from potential teammates being in serious car accidents, to a miscarriage, to all kinds of demonic attack. Plus the internal frustration where you just feel empty, like, “Even if we ever got there, what good would it do?”
After we arrived there were days when our daughter was really ill with stomach sickness and hadn’t eaten for a week. But you learn that the tears you cry, are precious and powerful. This life can’t be sustained by sheer force of will or commitment. It helps to remember that despite the pain and sufferings, we are in God’s will. (See Note #5)
And then you get the sense of hope and cheer when God shows himself so faithful. For instance, the amazing way he provided a God-fearing and honorable Muslim family in our new city who let us live with them for a month. Now our whole neighborhood is open to us.
Q: What scripture or books have had significant impact on your direction?
Isaiah 42:6-9, Psalm 126:5-6, Romans 1:5 and 15:20. Of special note is 2 Corinthians 4:2-6: I memorized this and meditate on it often. As for books, George Hunter’s The Celtic Way of Evangelism, The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark, and both Through Gates of Splendor and The Journals of Jim Eliot.
Q: Can you describe a pivotal event on your journey in which you made a significant decision to keep going?
I remember realizing I was called to go to the Muslim world, sure of it in fact, but my pregnant wife was absolutely opposed to the idea. This brought great pressure to bear on our marriage. I was a pastor at the time. I remember one day walking out our front door to pray. I was thinking about my calling and the barriers in front of us.
After I’d walked a hundred feet an image of my mom flashed across my mind. She had died a year earlier following heart surgery. All I could see was blood everywhere and machines barely keeping my mom alive. In the midst of this scene, I sensed the Lord saying, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” I realized anew that I can’t control God. I had to offer him this burden I carried. Nothing would ever grow from a seed that hadn’t allowed itself to be buried.
We eventually made it to our city. Early in our bonding time I used this passage to explain who we are and what we are about to the family we lived with; our best, most trusted friends in India. I said, “God told us to come to India, and we have obeyed him as this passage teaches. We have buried ourselves in India. We are dead to our old lives. If there is any hope of good coming from us, it will be like that seed: Buried in the ground and one day, when it is all but forgotten, it sprouts. First one leaf, then two. Since God is the gardener, he is able to bring fruit from our lives. That is why we are in India.” (See Note #6)
Q: What has this experience been like for your wife?
My wife loves what we are doing now. She has sensed God’s call clearly in the process; she knows this is what God has for our family. She still sees her most pressing calling to care for and educate our kids, but she is also doing great in her language-learning, is super loved by her Muslim friends, and is unbelievably resilient considering all we have been through. We both fully believe that God is calling our family to sow the gospel in the midst of tears, and that joy will follow along with a harvest for God’s glory among the nations.
Those who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.
Psalm 126:5-6
Notes from Shane
Note #1 – Mobilizing the military: Is military service part of your story? Check out Operation Reveille. It’s a ministry of Mission to Unreached Peoples that mobilizes military Christians to seize their unique opportunity to understand and support God’s work in overseas regions where they are professionally committed.
Note #2 – Missions education: Beginning this week, more than 170 Perspectives classes will be launched in the US and around the world. Visit a class near you! If you haven’t taken it before, consider doing so. If you can’t take it or already have, consider paying someone else’s way. (Actually it’s a good idea to avoid following our friend’s example in one respect: if you have a husband or wife, try to take the class together!)
Note #3 – Crossing cultures: As you know, relationships with people from other cultures, or people following other faiths, can have dramatic effect on young believers. What are some ways you’ve seen this work? Do you have models the rest of us might implement to shape future emissaries?
Note #4 – Growing deeper: Got a Nouwen favorite? Mine is his book on Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son. Warm insights on great art and the great God in the middle of it all. Many of you have fond memories of Keith Green. Are you gutsy enough to buy an album and give it to a young, potential missionary?
Note #5 – Laying down self: What sort of prayer does this cause to rise up in you? For me: I want to ask God for a heart that’s willing to suffer, that trusts him in spite of the movie playing out in front of me.
Note #6 – Next steps: I don’t know about you, but I’m looking on Kayak.com for tickets to India right now! Would you like to join this guy’s team? Would you like God to take you to a fresh field, where no seed has yet been sown, and there be buried? Send me an email and I can help you begin that exploration with Frontiers.
Questions, comments, submissions? Contact us.