by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March/April 2021
The Ashantika people of northern Peru work hard for basic survival near the Amazon River.
By Joy Smith Griffin –
“Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his heart.’“ John 7:38, NLT
“This river is our life.”
Unspoken, yet undeniably implied, these words played out before me as I stepped gingerly onto the banks of the Amazon River in northern Peru. Having been deposited on the edge of the tropical rainforest by John, our missionary pilot, my friend Carolyn and I disembarked from the tiny, four-seat floatplane, our backpacks most likely representing more material goods than the sum total of all these precious Ashantika natives.
With some clad in rags and others in altogether nothing, young mothers were washing their little ones in the murky, dark-brown river water, while others were gathering the same in clay jugs for cooking. Young men in primitive dugout canoes were playfully splashing makeshift fishing poles in the muddy waters, angling for some piranha protein for their day’s diet. Careful to respect their privacy, we trudged on through the rainforest to our camp, a thatched roof structure surrounded by a canopy of lush green vegetation.
Reflecting on my own life’s journey that led up to this moment, my thoughts drifted several decades back to Christian camp meetings in my home state of Georgia. Every summer, my hardworking, dairy-farming parents would set aside a week to take my brother and me to a gathering with other believers for some good old-time revival meetings, fellowship around the campfire, singing gospel songs, and just plain fun. Having given my life to Jesus at the age of twelve, I was curious about going deeper in my walk with Him.
The next summer, I seized my opportunity. The missionary guest speaker had just shared a midweek message about all the unreached people groups of the world. “Did you know that there are parts of the world where people have never even heard the name of Jesus, much less been told the Good News? If you are feeling the tug of the Holy Spirit on your heart tonight to go to the unreached people of the world, to the uttermost ends of the earth, I invite you to come forward now.”
Completely unaware of anything except that I was hearing Jesus call me to go forward, I leapt out of my seat and fell before Him on that sawdust-covered floor. “Here I am, Jesus. Send me!” As I prayed to receive this commission, I had a strong visual impression of a jungle rainforest. Somehow, I knew I would see it one day.
Men and women learn about evangelism at an International Leadership Institute teaching event.
Now in the Amazon jungle, my childhood vision having just become a reality, joy exploded within me as I tearfully offered thanksgiving to God. “Thank you, Jesus, for answering my prayer! Even if you were to send me back home right now, you have fulfilled my dream! With all my heart, I want these people to know you!” Energized by my own elation, knowing that God had sent me and would be with me, I knew I could do anything through the strength Jesus would provide.
When my husband Wes and I launched the International Leadership Institute (ILI) in 1998, we believed it could accelerate the spread of the life-transforming power of the gospel through leaders of leaders empowered by the Holy Spirit. Today, there are more than 300,000 ILI alumni in 108 nations.
Equipped for foreign missionary service through my studies at Asbury Seminary, it was there I had met my friend and present travel companion, Carolyn. As a missionary kid raised in Guyana, she had longed to return to the South American rainforest of her upbringing, so she readily accepted my invitation to go to Peru. While Wes was, and is, completely supportive of my many mission endeavors, he sat this one out. “You go and I’ll pray,” he said.
So here we were! Knowing that our journey would have taken seven days by motor boat from Pukallpa, I expressed my thanks to our pilot, John, and asked him to tell us what had prompted him to become a missionary pilot. Raised in Ecuador, John’s Christian parents had become friends with now-legendary missionaries Nate Saint and Jim Elliot as they were attempting to evangelize the Huaorani Indians, a small, ferocious, unreached people group in the Ecuadorian jungle. Although Nate Saint and Jim Elliot were martyred when the Huaorani attacked and speared them to death, John’s parents were in another location when this tragedy occurred. Hearing the story of these missionaries’ selfless courage, John was determined to follow in their footsteps and went to the States to study aviation, eventually returning to his roots in South America. And now, John was helping us to spread the gospel here in the Amazon jungle.
Having been asked to speak at an evening service which other villages had been invited to attend, I was preparing my heart to listen to what the Lord had for me to share. Noticing some commotion around the compound, I saw a giant rodent the size of a small dog, something called capybaras in the Ashantika language, but which qualified as a rat in my book. Yet the natives were not fending this creature off; they were preparing him to be the main course for their evening meal! As the men dug a deep pit, threw in hot rocks from the fire, added Mr. Rat and smothered everything with banana leaves to keep in the moisture, I realized this would be my supper, too.
But there would be another delicacy on the table. A carb staple in the Ashantika tribe’s diet is yuka, a form of the cassava root, which they dig up with machetes and then relentlessly pound into submission. However, this root is so hard that in order to make it edible, everyone is given a piece to chew on until it softens. And then – oh, Lord have mercy – they spit it back into a common pot for all to enjoy. Our evening meal would be Rat ‘n Root.
Silently thanking God for all the ways he had prepared me for situations like this, I thought gratefully of one of my favorite professors at Asbury, J.T. Seamands, who taught us the importance of cultural relevance in missions. Wes and I, along with the other founders of ILI, included Culturally Relevant Evangelism as one of the eight core values of the Christian faith in ILI training. This basically means when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in the Amazon jungle, eat rats and roots. And smile. Big. However, I did ask Jesus to help me not vomit as I swallowed it.
My upbringing on a dairy farm also did away with any squeamishness over sleeping on cow-manure floors, eating maggots and bugs like I did in India, drinking cow’s blood in parts of Africa, you name it. I realized early on that not only my acceptance of native practices, but my participation in them, would build a bridge of trust between us. I would no longer be considered an outsider, but would become like one of them. I knew this was a key to being able to effectively share the gospel.
With just one precious hour to call my own between our afternoon teaching sessions and the evening feast and service at which I’d be speaking, I decided to take a dugout canoe out on the river and talk to Jesus, since he’s always in the boat. But this one was pretty cramped, since a dugout is just a log with a big hole dug out in the middle where you sit. Grabbing a stick to serve as a paddle, I plopped down into the hole and shoved off from the shore.
“Jesus, the rest of the world doesn’t even know these people are here. But you do, and now I do. They’re unreached because it’s so hard to get to them, so I want this time to matter for eternity. I want them to know you like I know you, Jesus. Tell me what to say to them tonight.”
SPLASH! Suddenly, I heard a major disturbance in the water from the side of the river where I’d just been. Pretty sure it wasn’t the Loch Ness monster, I still had a sense of imminent danger lurking in the muddy brown water, although its opaque darkness provided the perpetrator with a worthy disguise. Knowing I couldn’t turn the dugout around too quickly or I’d capsize, I also knew Jesus was in my boat and would protect me.
“BOA! BOA!” Frenzied shouts from the natives on the river bank accompanied a geyser-like eruption from the water in the place I had just passed over. A giant, stonegray creature was rolling violently behind me – a massive anaconda! This species of snake, a type of boa constrictor, can swallow a human being whole. In fact, anacondas in India are called “cow killers” because they can literally consume a cow in a single gulp. Having seen my shadow, this humongous serpent had surfaced to make me his evening meal, but somehow Jesus kept it at bay as he guided me safely to shore.
Resounding screams erupted from those who had witnessed it from the bank of the river. Having heard stories of friends and relatives who had canoed down the river to trade bananas and never returned, my close encounter with the anaconda overwhelmed them. Not aware that this danger was so present in the river that was life to them, that provided them with water to drink as well as for cooking and bathing, they quickly became aware that I had been protected from harm in a way that could only be described as supernatural. A somber sense of awe settled over the village that night.
With the dawning of the next day came bright sunshine and an excitement in the atmosphere as I prepared to teach. Wanting to share with the students about spiritual warfare from I Peter 5:8, I began to recite that verse knowing my awesome interpreter, Carlos, would be working with me hand in glove.
“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion … ”
Panic suddenly clouded the countenance of my very competent interpreter. “Carlos, what’s wrong?” I asked in alarm. “There is no word in Ashantika for lion! I can’t describe something that doesn’t even exist for them!”
“Then just say ‘big cat!”‘ I said. “But we don’t have cats either!” he said in exasperation.
Knowing we were between a rock and a hard place, I sent a quick bullet prayer to Jesus. Immediately, the answer came.
“Your enemy the devil is like a BOA! When he sees a shadow come over the water, he tries to drown it!” With that, the Holy Spirit connected all the dots, teaching these people that, while their river may be the source of their physical water supply, only Jesus can save them forever and provide the living water that will never run dry.
News travels fast, even in the jungle, but I was still surprised to see an array of multicolored native headdresses worn by several different tribal chieftains as they floated on boats down the river, coming to a stop at our village.
“We heard that God saved the missionary from the boa! We want to know about this God!” Hallelujah! This opened the door for us to talk about Jesus being the Living Water.
Touched by the truth of God’s Word coupled with this vivid testimony of his ability to rescue us from harm, many prayed to receive Jesus that evening, surrendering their lives to him. Our prayers for the salvation of these people were answered.
Preparing for our departure to the States, we waited for John to return with the floatplane, eager to share these adventures with our pilot friend. However, the look on his face told us we wouldn’t be returning to civilization anytime soon. “I hate to tell you this, but there is a national strike in Peru of all the copper and salt mine workers. All transportation has stopped and there are armed guards everywhere. But knowing you ladies and your call to share the gospel, this might be an opportunity for you to reach another group that has never heard about Jesus. It’s about a 45-minute flight from here; the only thing is, I’m not sure we have enough fuel to get there and back.”
Excited by the possibility, Carolyn and I agreed to go. As we approached the area where John needed to land, he said, “We really need to pray. There may be people, goats, and who knows what else in the water, and then we can’t land. So be prepared to jump out of the plane and I’ll throw your bags out so I can keep the plane moving.”
As we made our debuts as stunt artists, the people on the banks stared at us, two wacko white women wearing skirts and jumping out of an airplane! But the love of Jesus speaks a universal language, and we were able to share the good news with yet another unreached people group.
Our faithful pilot John was not able to make it back to retrieve Carolyn and me, so we had to devise some other way to get ourselves back to Lima. With the strike wreaking havoc throughout Peru, I knew we would have to find a driver who was willing to take some risks. Having reserved $100 in U.S. currency for emergencies, I figured this definitely qualified as one and paid a man to drive us through the cold, dark night through an area known for bandits.
Given the state of these jungle roads, if you can even call them that, it was not surprising when our vehicle broke an axle and came to an abrupt halt. Helping our driver hoist it onto a rock for a makeshift repair, he was able to at least get the car to move again, albeit at the pace of a tortoise. Limping along in the pitch-black night, we came across another disabled vehicle, a truck that had gone off the one lane pig-trail of a road and plunged into a ravine. Some questionable-looking men surrounded it and leered at us as we slowly ambled by. Although we had nothing valuable for them to steal, our nervous driver was quickly convinced of the power of prayer.
With daybreak, we crested a hill and caught our first glimpse of Lima! Pressing on towards the airport, we were surprised to not encounter any road blocks or guards, and soon learned that the Peruvian government had lifted strike sanctions earlier that morning. Sleepless, hungry, filthy, and yet somehow altogether elated, we heaved ourselves into our airplane seats and thanked God for seeing us safely on our way home. It was only after takeoff that we learned the strike had just resumed.
Joy Smith Griffin is the co-founder, with her husband Wes, of the International Leadership Institute (ILIteam.org). Having been paralyzed from a sports injury at the age of 22, Joy’s complete confinement for 18-months led to a personal encounter with God that transformed her. She tells the story in Jumping for Joy. This article is reprinted, by permission, from that book.
by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March/April 2021
“If, as the Gnostics claimed, God could not be sullied by coming into contact with creation because he was ‘pure spirit,’ then, from the outset, the incarnation would not have been possible,” writes Dr. Timothy Tennent. Photo: Pexels.com.
By Thomas Lambrecht-
Our church and our culture are divided. Same-sex marriage, gender identity, pornography, abortion, cohabitation, divorce. These and other “culture war” issues pose a challenge to Christians about how to understand and articulate biblical Christian values in a post-Christian society.
The problem is that we are in reactive mode, responding to each of these separate issues individually by saying “no.” Non-Christians constantly hear the “no,” without every hearing the “yes” that underlies it.
In addition, we fail to see how all of these individual issues relate to each other. We therefore end up teaching and preaching a set of value judgments based on Scripture, rather than a coherent theology that sets forth a positive Christian vision for how to live a godly life.
That is the thesis of a new book by Dr. Timothy C. Tennent, president of Asbury Theological Seminary. For the Body: Recovering a Theology of Gender, Sexuality, and the Human Body is an ambitious effort to construct the framework for a comprehensive Christian understanding of the body that can guide our ethical reflection on many controversial and difficult questions.
“The church has failed to understand that these seemingly disparate issues are actually manifestations of a single root problem – namely, our failure to articulate a Christian view of the body,” Tennent writes. “These issues are like fires that keep breaking out in different parts of the culture, and members of the church are like firefighters desperately careening from one spot to another, trying to put out this fire or that fire. But our focus on extinguishing individual fires has prevented us from examining the underlying cause of those fires. The church has been missing the larger foundational issue because we have been framing the issue in smaller ways. The result is that the society perceives the church to be merely against a range of behaviors or actions, but they have no compelling vision of what we are for” (emphasis original).
Drawing on Scripture, the seminal work of Pope John Paul II (Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body), the writings of early church fathers, and the current work of evangelical scholars, Tennent compiles a coherent and comprehensive understanding of how Christians ought to make sense of our embodied existence.
Tennent identifies two heresies when it comes to our relationship with our bodies. One is the neo-gnostic view that separates the soul from the body. It privileges the “heart,” feelings, and the spiritual aspect of human existence, while viewing the body as either evil or of no consequence. This “mind over matter” approach says that what I feel about myself is more determinative of my identity than the reality of the body God gave me. The body then becomes a tool I can use to actualize my existence and express who I really am. Thus, gender identity becomes separated from biological sex, and the body can be altered and shaped in whatever way I desire for my own fulfillment.
The other heresy reduces the body to a set of biological categories with no moral significance. I can do whatever I want with my body because it is just a material substance that has no lasting value.
Foundational to Tennent’s understanding is the reminder that God created us as embodied human beings. Created in God’s image, we point to the Trinity as a union of body, soul, and spirit. We recapitulate the incarnation of Christ in the union of the physical and the material in one person.
Created Purpose of the Body. Humanity was created for a purpose – to represent God on earth. Fulfilling that purpose, we are given the roles of fruitfulness and stewardship of the earth, including our own bodies (Genesis 1:28, 2:15). We are called “to extend [God’s] dominion over the created world … to steward it according to God’s gracious rule,” Tennent writes. God’s image reflects “a special relational capacity” that is demonstrated in our ability to make covenant relationships with one another, particularly the covenant of marriage. “We understand that we have the capacity to recognize moral categories because we are endowed with the image of God and the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit,” he states.
Our bodies are not to be idols, either because we exalt the beauty of the body above the beauty of the spirit, or because we replace God’s vision for our bodies with one of our own making. Instead, we are to be image-bearers for God, reflecting his image in the world through dominion/stewardship, relationship, and morally right living.
Creation establishes the moral boundaries within which we are to live. The Fall came about because Adam and Eve resisted God’s created boundaries and wanted to determine their own by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God’s image extends to the very physicality of our bodies, in that he created us male and female. Separately, we do not reflect the complete image of God, but together, male and female recapitulate his image in our complementary relationships (Genesis 1:27). The denial of our created gender is a denial of the image of God and of the moral boundaries built into the creation itself.
Icon of Christ. The physical body is an icon, or representation, of Christ’s incarnation. “If, as the Gnostics claimed, God could not be sullied by coming into contact with creation because he was ‘pure spirit,’ then, from the outset, the incarnation would not have been possible,” Tennent writes. “If our bodies are untrustworthy and only serve to mask the true self that is within, then the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity as Jesus of Nazareth cannot be trusted as a reliable means for God’s most profound self-disclosure in history.”
The very physicality of the body is the means by which God wrought redemption through the body of Christ, crucified on the cross and raised from the tomb. Further, our bodies are the channels through which God’s grace comes to us. “We read Scripture with our eyes, we speak it with our mouths, and we hear it with our ears. We take the Lord’s Supper … into our bodies, we pray in and through our minds and bodies,” he observes. “We obey God’s Word and serve others (works of piety) through our bodies. The physical body is the means through which God conveys his grace into our lives, the channel through which God works his purposes in us” (emphasis original).
We are created as embodied spirits in the image of God. But that image has been marred by the Fall. We experience brokenness and disordered desires because of sin. “We should not equate the phrase ‘I was born this way’ with the phrase ‘God made me this way,’” Tennent states. The way we are is not completely the way God intended us to be. Hence, the need for redemption and a “new creation” in Jesus Christ.
Marriage. “Marriage between a man and a woman is an embodied icon pointing to the greater mystery of Christ and his church,” he writes. Marriage is designed to be a covenant that demonstrates the eternal relationship between Christ and his Church. Therefore, marriage is not to be a commodity that has value only as long as the spouse or the marriage are meeting one’s own needs.
Marriage is unitive, uniting two sexually differentiated persons into one, “representing Christ’s unity with his church, the bride of Christ,” Tennent states. “Adultery, fornication, and gay marriage all erode one of the key markers of marriage: the exclusive, unitive sign of our union with Christ as the people of God.”
Marriage is also normally procreative, as demonstrated by the design of the male and female bodies: “When sex is separated from these spiritual realities, fragmentation and brokenness occur.”
Marriage is binary, uniting one man and one woman, “two separate glories – two ‘others’ – coming together in a covenantal relationship,” Tennent writes. Marriage is self-giving, modeling Christ’s sacrificial love. In all these ways, marriage, the uniting of two persons, two bodies, is diminished when the spiritual realities behind it are ignored.
Further, sex outside of marriage “violates the biblical logic of marriage as covenant, since the one-flesh exclusive relationship is meant to be an icon of the faithfulness of God who is always faithful to his covenant with us,” he observes. Marriage is the antidote to consumer relationships, which are valuable only as long as they meet my needs. “If the bond of marriage does not hold up during times of testing and is easily broken,” he believes, “it unintentionally conveys the unreliability of God’s bond with us.”
Singleness. Tennent maintains “singleness and the married life are two intricately related mysteries that anticipate the same future reality,” namely, intimate fellowship with God. Celibate singleness “point[s] back to the dawn of creation, before rebellion and sin entered the world. It serve[s] as a remembrance of our purified state before God in creation prior to the fall,” he writes.
Since marriage is only for this life (Mark 12:25), it “is not an ultimate end, or an end in itself. Rather, it is a temporary reality, one limited to this age, this season of life. A call to singleness and celibacy is a temporal anticipation of a future resurrected life.” By devoting oneself more single-mindedly to matters of the Kingdom of God, the single person can experience more directly the intimate fellowship with God that all will experience in the future age.
Singleness is both a gift and a calling from God. It allows persons “to live in the present age in such a way that they are already embodying the eschatological reality of the marriage supper of the Lamb,” Tennent believes (emphasis original). It has a powerful effect on society. “There is no greater witness against the overly sexualized world of later modernity and postmodernity than a person who embodies the celibate life in anticipation of the age to come,” he writes.
Singleness can also provide an antidote to a too-narrow focus on family and kinship ties. Same-sex friendship is a key component of the single life. Proper sexual boundaries allow “for the healthy growth and flourishing of other kinds of social relationships, and these relationships are diminished when sexual activity is inserted into every intimate social relationship,” Tennent writes. The church is ideally positioned to be the arena for such friendships for singles and married persons alike.
The Body as Sacrament. Tennent points out that our bodies can be “sacraments” for the world. “Our physical bodies are beacons or signs to the world as we embody God’s saving purposes and his holy love,” he writes. “Our bodies are ‘mobile temples’ that sacramentally represent God in the world.”
Baptism “is an act done with our physical bodies, and we are also baptized into a new ‘body,’ namely, the church” (emphasis original). In communion, “the physical elements of bread and wine are tangible reminders of the physical reality of the incarnation and Jesus’s real sacrifice of his body for the sins of the world,” as well as “a reminder of the physical reality of the bodily resurrection,” he observes.
“We walk into the world every day as the church, the embodied presence of the in-breaking new creation,” Tennent writes (emphasis original). “We are to be the corporate embodiment of all the future realities of the kingdom, including holiness, reconciliation, and hope, all of which the world is desperate for.”
This embodiment of the Gospel, God’s in-breaking Kingdom, is seen also in the countless ways that we give ourselves in love and service to others with our bodies. “So-called ‘menial’ tasks can be daily gifts we give to one another to reflect the self-giving love of God.” He believes our vision of life is transformed by a proper theology of the body, “embracing the sacredness and sanctity of all our embodied existence and seeing the eternal significance of each day.”
Dr. Timothy Tennent
Societal Brokenness. Tennent interacts with the ways our society has misunderstood and warped our comprehension of our bodies. The objectification of the body, the idea that what we do with our own bodies is no one else’s business and has no moral implications, the use of bodily images to incite sexual or material lust, and pornography are all examples of this warped understanding. Such an understanding leads to the destructive forces of self-hatred and shame that are so rampant in our society today.
He pinpoints the ultimate issue at stake in the current cultural debates. “This discussion is really a struggle over our understanding of the human body, not merely about the definition of marriage or who can have sex with whom … The church must affirm the twin truths that all persons are sacred and created in the image of God and yet that all are subject to the moral boundaries that God has established for human flourishing,” he testifies.
The way to combat the secularization of the church’s understanding of the body, Tennent suggests, is through effective discipleship and catechesis – the intentional and systematic teaching of the church’s doctrine and a proper theology of the body. Such catechesis sees “God alone [as] the only ground of objective moral values and truth,” and that “revealed basis for morality” is found in God’s word. “A theistic worldview provides the only firm foundation for human flourishing and moral argument,” he writes. To this end, Tennent provides a couple chapters of practical suggestions on implementing such a discipleship program.
Timothy Tennent has given us an outstanding framework for a proper theology of the body. Others can build on and add to this framework. It gives us a holistic way to address the brokenness in our culture by setting forth a positive vision of what the human body is for and what kinds of uses of the body glorify God. We are, after all, people in bodies – bodies that will be raised and glorified at the resurrection. These “glorious, image-bearing” bodies point to the spiritual and moral underpinnings of the created universe. We should understand and live accordingly.
Thomas Lambrecht is a United Methodist clergyperson and the vice president of Good News.
by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March/April 2021
The Rev. Jorge Acevedo and his wife Cheryl flank Bishop Lawrence Beka of the Methodist Church Ghana at the 2019 missions conference at Grace Church in southwest Florida. Photo courtesy of Grace Church.
By Jenifer Jones-
Nearly 20 years ago, Jorge Acevedo had an epiphany. He’s the lead pastor at Grace Church, a multi-site United Methodist congregation in Southwest Florida. At the time, his church was one of the fastest growing United Methodist congregations in the United States. “Our local mission was on fire. I mean, we were doing great things,” he said. “But we were what I now call a Jerusalem-only church. We were only obeying one portion of Acts 1:8.”
In 2001, a lay leader suggested the church participate in what is now called Activate Training, led by TMS Global. The program aims to help churches discover and live out their unique missional calling. Participants learn what the Bible says about missions, the state of the world as it relates to God’s mission, and what shifts in thinking the church needs to make in order to deeply engage in missions.
Towards the end of the two-day workshop, Acevedo said the Holy Spirit broke him. The next morning, he told his congregation, “Your pastor needs to confess a sin to you. We’ve been red hot for our community, and we’ll continue to do that, God being our helper. But we need to get God’s heart for the world. So let’s go!”
That was on September 9, 2001. A couple of days later, Acevedo watched on TV as planes flew into the World Trade Center. “It was as if God was saying to me that this is why we need to go to the ends of the earth,” Acevedo said. “Because this world will never know peace until all people know the Prince of Peace.”
Now, 20 years later, in the midst of a global pandemic and other crises, it’s as important as ever for the Church to introduce the world to the Prince of Peace. That’s why the Rev. Reginald Belton, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Brownsville, in Brooklyn, New York, decided to move forward with Activate Training, rather than wait until the coronavirus pandemic was over.
“I just believe we can’t turn inwardly,” Belton said, “because when we do that, we shut out everyone else. And outreach is what we’re here to do. In the Great Commission Jesus never said that everything has to be perfect for you to go forth and make disciples. You just have to go forth.”
The church is located in an area with a high concentration of public housing. Belton says the neighborhood also has high rates of crime and violence. “Inner-city ministry is a lot different than doing ministry in the south, or outside of the inner city,” Belton said. “Urban ministry is much different. In the inner city, the door-to-door stuff doesn’t work anymore. So I was looking for a way that we could be effective in our community, but also reach beyond our borders.”
First Baptist Church of Brownsville was established in 1925 and has been in its current location since 1954. Membership has fluctuated throughout the years but now sits at more than 200 people.
“We’re growing again, doing some exciting stuff,” Belton said. “But missions and evangelism have been lacking. We wanted to figure out how we could get out there and do it but do it in a very organized and systematic manner, where we were effective.” Belton and members of his congregation participated in Activate Training this past October and November. The sessions were held via video-chat over several weeks.
The Rev. Reginald Belton, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York.
Belton says the training helped him and his team create a focused, systematic approach to outreach. “We had great things we wanted to do,” Belton said. But the challenge for the church was organizing strategic goals. “So that’s what TMS Global has done for us. They really helped us organize so that we’re not just blasting all over the place with no plan. We have a focus, and we’re moving toward that goal to do local, state, city, country, and worldwide mission and evangelism.”
Belton says his church also learned how to effectively partner with others. “We don’t have to go it alone. It’s much too big,” Belton said. “That in itself took away anxiety, knowing that we would have partners and people to join in this mission and evangelism with us. And those are people who are experts at doing it, who’ve been doing it a long time.”
Sonji Pass, TMS Global’s regional director of Church Culture, said the process works because it’s bathed in prayer. “I think it’s so easy to go into an area and immediately want to respond to its needs, and then say, ‘Oh yeah, Lord, will You bless what we’re doing?’” she observes.
Instead, those participating learn to begin with strategic prayer, to ask specific questions and listen for the Lord’s response. This kind of praying happens throughout the entire process. The Activate Training is followed by a season of coaching that lasts one-to-three years. TMS Global staff have begun to mentor Belton and his team, helping them create a focused plan for making missions the core of everything his church does.
“Our coaching is not prescribed,” Pass said. “We have a general outline, a structure, that we present, but then we allow the Lord to fill in. The rest just depends on what the church’s mobilization team responds to, and what they sense the Lord would have them do in their particular context.”
It’s been nearly two decades since TMS Global finished the coaching process with Jorge Acevedo and Grace Church in Florida. In the years since, he says his congregation has raised millions of dollars for missions, sent thousands of people on mission trips, and participated in countless hours of prayer. “I’ve watched as our people have moved into the neighborhoods of the world and seen their lives changed,” Acevedo said.
As part of the training, churches learn how to raise more money for missions through faith promise giving. Each individual prays and asks God what dollar amount he would provide for them to give. They then pledge that amount, and trust God to provide.
Rhonda Dahlin, also a regional director of Church Culture, reported that some churches raise three, four, or even ten times the amount of their previous missions budget in one year by following the faith promise plan. “We are not called to go and do something in our own effort,” Dahlin said. “We’re called to respond to what God is saying He is going to do through us. So applying that also to our giving is the principle behind faith promise.”
Acevedo says his congregation’s giving to faith promise has actually increased during the coronavirus pandemic. Although his church completed the coaching process with TMS Global close to 20 years ago, he says saying “yes” to the mission of Jesus requires constant, ongoing work and a willingness to innovate.
“For our church, every year, it’s winning more converts. I don’t mean converts to Jesus; I mean converts to God’s mission in the world,” Acevedo said. “I always pray, every year, ‘Lord, will you give us a few dozen more converts to the world?’ And every year I see people saying, ‘Oh, I’ve got to join Jesus in his mission.’”
Acevedo says he’s had to innovate throughout the coronavirus pandemic. But he’s continued to focus on missions, because the needs of his church’s mission partners have increased, not decreased.
And what about after the pandemic? What then? “Many pastors are looking around at nearly empty pew seats – or fewer people logged on to online services – and wondering what their church will look like this time next year,” said Sarah Parham, senior director of Domestic Mobilization for TMS Global. “They’re asking, ‘Who will we become?’”
“When the church emerges from this pandemic it will be different,” says Dahlin. “And we have to emerge as a missional church. We have to have a missional outlook. If we’re not missional as churches, we are going to accelerate our decline, especially in the U.S.”
“Loving our neighbors and transforming our communities has never been more vital,” says the Rev. Carolyn Moore, lead pastor of Mosaic Church in Evans, Georgia. She agrees that, unless things change, the American church may be headed into a time of decline. “These have been defining days for so many people, and when we emerge from this, many will struggle to regain faith and energy for Kingdom work. The lack of discipleship and worship for so many over such a long period is going to take its toll.”
But, she notes, there’s still hope. “There is so much potential for being a positive force and voice in our communities, and I believe most communities are starving for that kind of voice. If we emerge with a missional voice that is married to strong, intentional discipleship, we could well look back on this season as the time when the Church got serious about advancing the Kingdom of God.”
Belton with First Baptist Church of Brownsville says Christians can be expanding the Kingdom even now. “This is a great time to do it because people are looking for answers. People are desperate. So I would encourage churches to jump in now, because this is the time that we’re going to have our greatest impact!”
He says he’s looking forward to leaning into the coaching process and putting what his church learns into action. “I thank God for TMS Global. I really do,” he says. “It’s going to be exciting.”
Jorge Acevedo says he encourages more churches to utilize the resources offered by TMS Global. “You’ve got nothing to lose,” says Acevedo. “And who knows? You might have your own ends-of-the-earth epiphany as I did. Or, as I tell my people around here, Jesus will wreck your life, and you’ll love it.” Acevedo says.
Jenifer Jones is a writer who focuses on telling stories about the work God is doing in the world. She’s also a poet. Find her writing at www.jeniferjones.com.
There’s no cost for TMS Global’s Activate training and coaching. If churches find value in the resources, they are encouraged to pay it forward so that other churches can participate. For more information about resources offered by TMS Global’s Church Culture Department, visit www.tms-global.org/churches.
by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2021
Illustration from Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse (HarperOne).
By Courtney Lott –
I spent a rainy January morning weeping into the pages of a children’s book. It’s called The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse.
Though simple on the surface, the drawings and uplifting sayings from the pen of Charlie Mackesy struck me profoundly. After I read the last page, I rushed quickly to Instagram to find more of his beautiful artwork. As I scrolled through his feed looking for a favorite to use as a new desktop background, I realized how much of an exercise in futility such a mission would be. Every image filled my cup. Often in ways I didn’t realize I needed.
Through the questions of the main character – simply called “the boy” – and the answers of the mole, fox, and horse, Mackesy provides rich insight into the world and deep comfort and encouragement to his readers.
“It’s surprising that I’ve made a book,” writes Mackesy in his introduction, “because I’m so bad at reading them. The truth is I need pictures. They are like islands, places to get to in a sea of words.”
Born in Northumberland, England, Mackesy started drawing when he was nineteen after the death of his best friend. While a deep need to discover purpose had always driven him to figure out why we are all here in the first place, this event served as an unavoidable tipping point. He sat on the pavement and drew, drew “obsessively,” for years in order to try and “make sense of existence.”
The answer, he says, lay behind him, in a lyric from David Bowie’s “Major Tom,” a song he and his best friend once sang long and loud even as atheists. “… may God’s love be with you.” They would scream it, Mackesy says, because it felt really good.
It took a long time and a lot of drawing for him to be able to see this as the answer. Science only told him how, he says, but never why, his atheism boiled it all down to genes, and religion gave him nothing more than a set of rules. None of these things met him in his sorrow and confusion.
Then, in a fragile state after the loss of his friend, he saw a statement that stopped him in his tracks. While waiting for the tube in London, he encountered a huge poster with the phrase, “Cast your burdens onto Jesus because he loves you.”
Though he had no desire to become religious, Mackesy says he read the phrase over and over, questioned and questioned, and dug and dug. And finally, after much wrestling, he realized the answer to “why” is Jesus. That no matter what choices we make, we are unconditionally loved by him. Ultimately, Mackesy concluded, this is freedom.
The reality of Christ’s love solidified and took shape for Mackesy when he finally visited church and met Nicky Gumble, the well-known rector of Holy Trinity Brompton church in London. Gumble immediately invited him to Alpha, an eleven week course that seeks to create a space where individuals can participate in a conversation about faith, life, and God. This served as the perfect place for Mackesy to continue to work out the answer to his ever-present question “why?”
As we go to press, Mackesy has sold has 1.4 million copies of his book and it has been translated into 17 languages.
His “obsessive drawing,” Mackesy says, reflects Bowie’s own searching for his “tenuous connection with God.” You can see this messy, honest journey splattered across the pages of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse in a kind of shabby glory. Each soft pen stroke portrays in its own way what Mackesy describes as “divinity mixed with the human mess.”
Perhaps it is this very untidy authenticity that accounts for the success of Mackesy’s book. What started a simple Instagram campaign to support National Health Service (NHS) medical workers exploded into a world-wide phenomenon. An editor at Ebury Press approached Mackesy when he hit 30,000 followers on the platform, asking if he’d be interested in putting the drawings together in a book.
Within a few months of its October 2019 release, it became a Christmas bestseller and went on to spend 55 weeks in the Sunday Times Bestsellers list top ten. More than that, his art has moved in the hearts of the worn out and weary.
Nurses under pressure reported to him that they’ve used his drawings to find a little peace amidst the 2020 chaos, PTSD units and clinics have utilized them for their patients, and thousands of individuals have printed off copies for themselves as their own little islands of peace in a trying time.
“These characters aren’t telling people what to do, because they’re talking to each other,” says Mackesy. “We’re just listening in, if you like, on the boy’s questions and their answers and vice versa.”
This overheard conversation invites the reader to vulnerability because the boy asks about that which we’re afraid to speak out loud. His longings and ponderings are our longings and ponderings. Like any good protagonist, he serves as an avatar for the audience, allowing us to learn along with him as he goes along on his journey.
This is the heart of Mackesy’s artwork. To provide a space for his readers to be open about what they’re feeling, and to be exactly who God created us to be. “No one is ordinary,” Mackesy said in an interview for GQ. “Everyone is unique. And love doesn’t require you to be anything other than who you are.”
Courtney Lott is the editorial assistant at Good News.
by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March-April 2021
The Rev. William C. Mason.
By Steve Beard –
Over the last several months, Good News lost two warm-hearted Christian friends who played important roles in the legacy of this ministry. Both writer Marilyn N. Anderes and the Rev. William Mason recently passed away and will be dearly missed by those of us at Good News who are grateful for their lives, witness, and faith.
Pastoral leadership. During his 30-year tenure as the senior pastor of a growing and thriving United Methodist congregation, the Rev. William C. Mason served as the chair of the Good News board of directors. We counted on his steady leadership, evangelical convictions, and fervent prayers. At his death last October, he was 93 years old.
Intermingled with our mourning of our friend and a lifetime member of the Good News board is a great deal of rejoicing in remembering a soft-spoken man with a pastoral heart who began every morning by praying in solitude for his family, his congregation, and our church.
Bill’s rock-solid faith and perseverance helped guide Tulsa’s Asbury United Methodist Church to become one of our denomination’s most distinguished and vision-oriented congregations. “His love for the Lord and for people, his scriptural teaching, and his pastoral care endeared him to generations of Oklahomans and beyond,” affirm his friends at Asbury. “Bill always stood for traditional and evangelical convictions.”
“Enter through the narrow gate,” said Jesus. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
Bill had been an office supply salesman when he heard Billy Graham at an Oklahoma City revival in 1960 preach about the two roads from Jesus’s message in Matthew. “As I laid in bed that night, the reality of my own life passed before me. I realized I was on the wide road that leads to destruction, and it was not the way I wanted to live my life anymore. I prayed and went to sleep,” he recalled.
“The next morning, I was a new person. I lost my appetite for alcohol, for lying to cover my tracks, for foul language, for using church as a social function. I was astounded at how vibrant I felt. I was 28 years old, yet I was born again in Jesus Christ.”
Bill felt called to full-time ministry and was appointed to Asbury after seminary. Bill credited seeking God’s will and direction in prayer for Asbury’s growth and development. The membership grew from 118 to over 5,200 members. He was featured on the cover of Good News twelve years ago, along with his successor, Dr. Tom Harrison, in an inspirational story about the ministry of Asbury. After 29 years as senior pastor of Asbury, Bill retired in 1993 and Tom was appointed to follow – and has faithfully continued to build upon the godly foundation.
“Bill and I have the same attitude toward ministry,” Harrison said. “We believe that to be faithful to the Great Commission, meeting people where they live is crucial; it is not an option.”
Writing to the Asbury congregation back in 2012, Mason wrote: “The lost, those who don’t yet know the love of Christ, should always be on your minds and hearts. And you must pay close attention to one another so that none who are already in Christ are lost. I pray that God will show you how to cooperate with what he wants to do in the world. May you invest the very best of yourself and your church in this endeavor, for what else yields so high a return?”
From the Heart. For 16 years, Marilyn Anderes served as the back-page “From the Heart” devotionalcolumnist for Good News. She died on Sunday, December 27, 2020 after a battle with pulmonary fibrosis. She is survived by her husband of 55 years, John, as well as her children and grandchildren. Marilyn was a devoted mom, an elementary and middle school teacher, mentor, and author. She had a magnificent smile and a generous spirit.
“Marilyn, Mal, as we affectionately called her, came to our church, Mount Oak United Methodist Church in Bowie, Maryland, with her family in 1971,” recalled the Rev. George Anderson, a retired United Methodist pastor. “In January of 1972 she gave her life to Jesus. My wife, Carol, says of Marilyn, ‘I taught her the scales (spiritually) and she made it into a concerto.’ She became an incredible Bible scholar, teacher, writer, speaker – but most of all, she and her family became our lifelong dear friends.”
Marilyn taught Bible studies and led seminars and retreats, both nationally and internationally, for the last 40 years. She was also the author of several books and dozens of magazine articles. The Intentional Remnant, her last book, was released just a few months before her death. An excerpt from this book appeared in the November/December issue of Good News.
“In all her writing and speaking, Marilyn called her audience to a deeper intimacy with God,” said Katy Kiser, team leader of the Renew Network. “Like the title of her book published in 2006, Marilyn wanted others to know that regardless of where we are in our walk with the Lord, there is always More. She knew the faithfulness of the Lord goes with us through our good times as well as our most difficult circumstances and trials.
“Today, Marilyn is home with the Lord. I see her delving even deeper into all that Jesus has prepared for her. As Paul wrote, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him’” (I Corinthians 2:9).
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
by Steve | Mar 18, 2021 | Magazine, Magazine Articles, March/April 2021
By Sarah Parham –
Everything from air travel to celebrating holidays to childhood education to church life has undergone dramatic shifts. As we watch the evening news, it seems as if our worlds are being completely shaken.
But are they? I have a framed quote on my desk right now from James Bryan Smith. It reads, “I am one in whom Christ dwells and delights. I live in his strong and unshakable kingdom. The kingdom is not in trouble, and neither am I.”
In other words, while our worlds are being shaken, the kingdom is unshakable. The kingdom is unshakable precisely because it is ruled by an unshakable king, who has an unchanging mission: to save and transform humanity and all creation. We need never to worry about transitions of power in the kingdom. There will not be a new administration, or a new cabinet with new priorities. The priorities of the kingdom will forever remain the same: to seek and save the lost. This is good news! We ourselves, somewhat lost in these transitions, have a mission.
There are three moments in scripture that come to mind when I think of our world being shaken. The first is when Moses met with God on Mount Sinai in Exodus 19. The Scripture says that “the Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai” as smoke covered the mountain, and the entire mountain trembled, and a trumpet sounded. This scene is enough to put the fear of God into the most skeptical among us. And yet, God is descending for the purpose of meeting with his people. Yes, it is terrifying, and yes, the earth is shaken, but God is coming down!
The second moment that comes to mind is at the crucifixion. Matthew 27 tells us that at the moment when Jesus gave up his spirit, there was an earthquake which split rocks and opened tombs.
The third shaking is found in Acts 4. Immediately following a prayer meeting, the place where the believers had gathered was shaken, in a move of the Spirit reminiscent of Pentecost found in Acts 2.
All of these shakings have two things in common. First, they are at moments when God is working to draw close to his people. At Sinai, he was making a covenant. Same was true at Golgotha. In the prayer meeting, God is filling his people with his Holy Spirit.
Second, in all of these moments, the mission of God is clear. At Sinai, the people were chosen to be God’s blessing to the nations. On the cross, Jesus died in order to bring all nations to himself. At the prayer meeting, the believers were filled with the Holy Spirit to proclaim the word of God and to live as signs of the kingdom.
So, these days, as we sense that our world is being shaken, we can look to the heavens – to the realm of the kingdom – and ask how God would like to come close for the sake of his mission. We can rest assured that our king has not changed, nor have his priorities.
“As far as you can, hold your confidence,” writes poet John O’Donohue in his book To Bless the Space Between Us. “Do not allow confusion to squander this call….” This call, to proclaim boldly the word of God and to live as signs of the kingdom, is far too important to be lost in the shaking.
In fact, when the world shakes, what is unshakable becomes even more clear. Like a chimney standing tall, unrattled, and unmoved after an earth-moving tornado, God’s call to his people remains. Let us not squander our call. In the unshakable kingdom of God, the rule of the king is unchanging, the power is steady, and the mission is always the same.
Sarah Parham serves as senior director for domestic mobilization at TMS Global. She is also co-moderator of the TMS Global podcast – Thy Kingdom Pod: Living in the Unfinished – that goes deeper into kingdom living in the here and now. To learn more visit www.tms-global.org.
