Leadership

YOUR Kingdom? Or THE Kingdom?

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pexels-photo-1266005If you’re focusing on building YOUR orphanage, please stop now. If you’re worried about orphan care everywhere, you have the correct attitude to care for orphans, carry on. It’s not about your kingdom; it’s about THE Kingdom. This applies to orphanages, churches, or any ministry you can mention.

When we first moved to Mexico and started receiving short-term teams, we quickly realized we did not have enough projects, or the right projects, for many of the groups coming down. We began coordinating projects in our town and with other local ministries. Then we did something that we didn’t know was fairly radical at the time. (We still don’t know a whole lot, we knew even less back then.) We started sending teams to other orphanages to serve. For a long time, this concept seemed to confuse people. The other orphanages wondered what our ulterior motives were, the groups didn’t know why we were sending them elsewhere, but we just saw it as spreading the wealth and helping people be as effective as possible. Aren’t we all worried about helping orphans?

We continue to send teams to other orphanages, and many now embrace our efforts to help orphan care wherever it happens. When you step back and look at it, it might be a little weird. It’s like a pastor getting up one Sunday and saying, “We’re kind of crowded, how about some of you visit another church from time to time?” Do we occasionally “lose” a team to another orphanage they visit? Sure, but maybe that’s not a bad thing. We are all called to different ministries, and we connect in different ways. If a group meets a new orphanage and decides they would rather work with them, great, everyone is happy, and we have room for more groups.

You can observe how rare it is for ministries to work together in any town in America; it is SO rare for churches to hang-out with each other. How many intersections have two or three churches that never talk to each other? I understand significant theological differences can come into play, but at the end of the day, if we serve the same God, then why is it so hard to work together? I once had the youth leader of a sizable visiting church ask me whether or not we support and work with smaller orphanages, I responded, “Sure, all the time. Does your church support smaller youth groups in your town?” He got the point I was making and became very quiet, it lead to some great discussions.

A few weeks ago, Strong Tower Ministries, an organization I help lead, coordinated an incredible event. (It wasn’t my project, someone brighter than I did the whole thing) Leaders from seven different human trafficking organizations, most of them working in the Tijuana area, were invited to come together for a weekend. Although they are all fighting human trafficking and helping people caught in the sex trades, most of the leaders had never met each other. Our team threw them together for a weekend in a big house, with a loose agenda, and piles of great food (priorities…). This is a group of people battling at the front lines of ministry, and you could feel the intensity of the people present. Over two days they shared, coordinated efforts, learned from each other, worshiped, and made plans to meet again. It was a weekend that will impact people and ministries for years.

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” Harry S Truman

The idea of ministries serving each other is starting to catch on in our area. Our small town in Mexico has about 4000 people and 12 churches. After several meetings lead by one of the churches, this coming Easter most of the churches are “closing for the day.” The collection of churches from our town are renting out a local rodeo stadium, and a combo Easter service is being planned. Worship will be lead by a new group made up from multiple churches, one pastor is taking the sermon, another making an invitation, each pastor will take a portion of the service. Each church is bringing what that can to make the service incredible. The collective body of Christ is coming together as one to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection in the center of the town for all to see. Wouldn’t it be great if this were to happen in towns everywhere?

Jesus spent a great deal of time talking about humble service. Humility isn’t putting yourself down or thinking you’re worthless. Humility is not thinking about yourself at all. If we put aside our desire to look better to others or to be in charge, if we didn’t care about building our own kingdoms, the church would look very different. Whose glory are you seeking? It’s a question we should ask ourselves daily.

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Short-term Missions Start at Home

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teamI’m a huge advocate of short-term missions. There is something about traveling to another country to share, serve, and experience life with others that is life-changing. Short-term mission trips are incredible for all involved when they are done in a healthy, reciprocal way. The best way to become a great short-term missionary is to be a great missionary to your community at home. Missions and Christian service should flow out of us all the time, wherever we are.

Several years ago, after I had been living in Mexico for a while, I was on the phone venting to a friend of mine after an exceptionally difficult week. I shared that I was involved in so many mission activities that I didn’t know where the line was between my missions life and my private life. He paused for a minute, and then responded with a few words that, although obvious, kind of shook my world, “Isn’t that the whole point? Our faith, our testimony, NEEDS to be our whole lives.”

The idea of anyone being a “missionary” for just a short trip is very odd when you step back and examine it. If we believe in the Gospel, and all that the Gospel is, it needs to be flowing out of us whenever and wherever we are. We can not compartmentalize our faith to a week-long trip or just a few activities to be checked off our “to-do” list. It needs to be who we are.

For many youth groups and churches, the short-term mission trip has become a staple of their annual activity, and this is a great thing. The important thing is to also be developing the heart of a missionary throughout the year and not just leading up to the week-long trip to Mexico, Africa, or Haiti. Why can’t any activity a youth group does be seen as missions? Throughout the year, we should be looking at any activity we do as part of our missions field. To compartmentalize missions into one or two weeks misses the whole point. We are called to serve others, build a relationship with others, and share the gospel through every part of our lives.

Even when a team is serving with us here in Mexico, we often see the compartmentalization of missions. “This is our schedule: work on these days, and then a fun day.” “We’re working for the morning, but then we’re going to the beach.” It’s like a switch gets flipped back and forth: “Christian / just a person / Christian again.” Fun days and beach days are great; we’re called to have a day of rest. But we need to be aware of those divine appointments that God has set up for us wherever we are, not just when the planned activities are taking place. We also need to be keenly aware that we represent the Gospel, for good or bad, wherever we are. We’ve seen way too many teams put on great programs with polished dramas, then turn around and destroy their testimony by going into our community and being rude and obnoxious in stores, restaurants, and with their general interactions with others.

It’s hard to imagine the early apostles compartmentalizing their evangelistic efforts. “Next week I’m traveling to Ephesus, planning some great activities.” “We’re practicing a really great drama for Corinth.” Yes, they traveled to all those locations, but I’m sure they were sharing the Gospel with their immediate neighbors, people in the market place, and people they just met along the road. Jesus had set that example. He obviously spoke with large crowds and presented very focused teachings, but He also shined at small gatherings, with the woman at the well, and whenever and wherever He interacted with others. This needs to be our goal as Christians.

The best training for short-term missions is becoming a missionary to your community. If you’re planning on building a home for someone in Mexico, practice by volunteering to do home repairs for someone in your church. If you’re going to do food distribution in Haiti, volunteer at a local food bank in your home town for a few hours a week. If you want to reach the broken or lonely in Africa, visit a retirement home and build some relationships down the block from where you are now. If you’re going to serve the world, start with washing the dishes for others in your own home.

At no time in history has it been so easy or cheap to travel around the world, this gives us incredible opportunities to share and serve with others. But, if we’re not sharing and helping with others who we live with and interact with every day, why should our lives be different because we’ve traveled to another country and are living out of a backpack?

Take a mission trip, go into the world and experience the profound joy of serving with others and representing Christ well. But practice at home first. Your walk with Christ will be better, your life will be better, and you’ll be a better missionary, wherever you are.

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What About Dad?

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50984016_10216681108634208_1859912021047246848_o.jpgFather, dad, pops, whatever word you use for the male parent in your life, it can bring up deep and complicated emotions. Our earthly father, and our relationship with him, for good or bad, will influence us for our entire lives. When you’re dealing with an orphaned or abandoned child, this can be profoundly complicated. Where does their security, and definition of fatherhood, come from?

It’s the rare movie scene that causes almost every male to tear up, the end of Field of Dreams is one of those scenes. When Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) plays catch with his dad as the sun sets it will squeeze a tear out of almost any man. That moment of healing between a father and son, the symbolic act of the “catch” as something is passed between them is powerful. There is just something about the relationship we have with our father that is universal. It’s not always great. Eventually, we realize that our parents are just flawed individuals like everyone else, but that relationship will brand us and follow us. It is reflected in the way we live out our lives, and how we parent our own children.

My wife and I were blessed with great fathers; men who lived as faithful providers, good examples, and loving husbands. They both lived by a defined moral compass. Although we’ve both lost our fathers over the last few years, their influence remains and continues to guide us. There are many things I remember fondly about my dad. He lived in a precise and consistent way: same job his whole adult life, ate dinner at the same time every night followed by the evening news, we were at church EVERY Sunday in the same pew. His temperament never changed; he was a rock. The worst I ever heard him cuss was the occasional “ah hell.” He gave me my love of Steinbeck novels, fine woodworking, and classical music. He made me who I am and I miss him deeply.

For any of us, our relationship with our earthly father is intertwined and woven together with our image of who our Heavenly Father is. Grace, acceptance, stability, discipline, love, all of the emotions and attributes we believe about our God are viewed through a window tinted by the image of our earthly father. Our heavenly Father is perfect; our earthly fathers are flawed. For many people, believing in a perfect Father after being abandoned or abused by their earthly father takes many years of healing, if it happens at all.

Restoring the image of a healthy father figure is essential to the long-term healing of a child who has been orphaned or abandoned. This restoration does not happen over-night, and it needs to been done with great care. Whether you’re caring for a child in an orphanage, one in foster care, or one you’ve adopted, this healing of the father image needs to happen if the child is ever going to grow into a healthy adult. It’s also critical if a child is going to have a healthy image of who God is.

If a child, especially a male child, does not have a male showing what a healthy person is, they will seek out whatever examples they can to see how to live their lives. I’ve seen this happen to young men who are raised in poorly run orphanages. They leave home and have no history of a strong male example to draw from as they make life decisions. How to act as a man of God, how to treat women with respect, how to walk with dignity. They spend much of their lives approaching life, and relationships, in a broken way. Their marriages fail, their faith never matures, and they’re left with finding their way in life from an unhealthy stew of input from wherever they can find it.

I do not believe the healing of the father image happens in counseling or “quality time,” although both of these things play a part. Healing takes time. A lot of time. Years of consistent healthy male examples in the life of a child. A child needs to watch healthy men of God living out their lives on a day to day basis. They need to watch healthy decisions, reactions, and actions take place for many years for the healing to take place. By seeing a solid male in action, showing grace, stability, guidance, love, and acceptance, a child can begin to understand who God is. Much more than we can ever realize, although we are flawed, we represent who God is to our children. We need to truly take on the image of Christ if we are to have a hand in the healing of broken children.

A few days ago, I was at a BBQ with several of the orphaned children (now adults) who were raised in our home. Midway through the party, I watched as a great young man, now married with three children, patiently and slowly showed his attentive eight-year-old son the proper way to season and grill steak. This might seem like a simple act, but I watched this man represent what it means to father someone, and show the patient guiding hand that our heavenly Father represents (The steak was pretty good also).

If you’re caring for orphaned or abandoned children stay the course. Healing doesn’t happen quickly. Continue to live a life representing who our Heavenly Father is. You are being watched more than you realize, they will follow your example.

The above photo is of Ramon Reid and his son. Ramon knows what putting fatherhood into action is all about. We need more men like Ramon in this world.

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When Short-Term Missions Go Wrong

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broken
There is a CEO of a major banking firm who has a unique way to interview people. He asks all the typical questions about goals, most significant strengths, etc., but then he does something little more creative. He takes the potential employee out to breakfast. This by itself is not a big deal; the difference is the restaurant has been instructed to get the order wrong. The CEO learns a great deal about the candidate by just watching their reaction to this small issue. Do they get angry? Do they lash out and blame the waiter? Do they ignore it? Or do they calmly ask for the correct order, realizing mistakes happen? When everything is going well it’s easy to come across as mature or grounded. Our reaction to adversity tells the world who we are.

For any number of reasons, things can go sideways on a missions trip. Flights get missed, passports are forgotten, materials aren’t ready when you arrive, the examples are endless of what can go wrong. A lot has been written about the need for extreme flexibility when in the missions field and most of it is valid. The best-organized plans can go wrong at any moment, not just in missions, but in life. The logistics going wrong are common, but sometimes it’s more significant issues. Very often, we go on a trip with concrete expectations, and the trip turns out very different than we had imagined. How we respond to adversity, our reaction to the unexpected, is a tremendous testimony to our spiritual maturity and shows all those around us who we are. We need to see the bigger picture; we need to understand who is really in charge and who’s agenda we need to be following.

As a ministry, on our end, a lot of preparation goes into any missions project, especially when a home is built for a family in our area. We spend months working with the local family to make sure they are genuinely in need of a house, are willing to work alongside the visiting group, and that they are connected in the community. We want to be good stewards of the houses the groups are building, and we want the groups to know the homes will have a long-term positive impact on the families they’re serving. Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, a home build can go sidewise.

Years ago, we had a group come down to build a house for a family in our town. At first, everything seemed fine. The family worked alongside the group for the week; the keys were handed over as the group prayed a blessing over the house and the family, everyone left feeling pretty good. Within a few months, everything went a little weird. The couple wound up separating and going through a fairly ugly divorce. The couple came to me asking, “Who gets the house?” I responded honestly that, “We gave it to you both, we have no say in the matter, it’s not our house.” Ultimately they couldn’t agree, and the house was kind of parted out and eventually abandoned. Not the way anyone thinks a missions project should end.

When the group came back a year later to build another house, they asked about visiting the couple. This lead to an awkward conversation as the situation was explained to the group. You could see how crestfallen and disappointed the group was. But, it also opened up a great discussion about expectations in ministry.

The home build that went “wrong” had blessings that rippled out that we can only begin to guess at. The home builds are some of the best outreach our ministry does. It brings up so many great questions in our town, mainly: “What kind of faith is it that draws people to give away houses to strangers knowing they will never be paid back?” Home builds are a phenomenal tool to reach many people in our community, way beyond just the families receiving the home.

Showing selfless acts of service and representing the Gospel well, never comes back empty. We might not see or know the results of our actions in this life, but the act of service itself is all that matters. That we are faithful to the call of visiting widows and orphans is what is important. We are called to give, to serve, to do what we can. The outcome is never guaranteed. The perceived result doesn’t matter, what matters is our obedience. Did we hear the call and follow through? Were we faithful to the one we serve?

Not everyone Jesus fed or healed became a follower; the important thing was Jesus was doing the will of His Father. If the person being healed by Jesus did not respond in a way that is expected or makes sense, that does not change the fact that everyone around Jesus seeing the miracle was being changed and affected. God knows what He is doing, even if we don’t.

If a mission trip, or any ministry project, goes differently than we expected, react in a way that shows everyone who is really in charge. God sees a bigger picture, take comfort, and even joy, when things turn out differently than expected. Show everyone that you trust in the One who called you.

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