karate kids and a future hope

There's a narrow stretch of winding road that cuts through Golf Sud, the neighborhood between our home and our church. Driving toward the northern shore I cut my way across the deep sand dunes that swell above the hidden paved road beneath. Along this road buses and taxis bob and weave shuttling the urban dwellers around the city. Shacks and high-rise concrete apartments alternate along the thin passageway. At the end of this road are a long row of ladies sitting behind ramshackle tables laid high with every kind of fresh fish. And at its start is a little welded cage no wider than a phone booth packed with sheep pressed against each other. This street is never empty. Men, women and children walk, ride, live on this street.

For me this street is the perfect image of urban Africa. Making my way down this road all the senses are constantly engaged. The smell of fresh bread at a corner bakery. The feel of sand shifting beneath your feet. The sound of people calling to one another. The taste of the ocean’s salt in the air.

This road never ceases to impress me with its life and vibrancy, but the other day it gave me the most powerful image of a city's potential to bring the worlds colliding into each other. Looking into the courtyard of a small mosque I saw a gathering of boys learning martial arts. The sight of these karate kids, these miniature West African Ralph Macchios, show the power cities have to bring distant worlds together. African cities are growing at an unprecedented rate. Men, women and children are leaving their villages with hearts filled with expectation and hope for the promise of the city.

As my American eyes drank deeply of these Africans in a Middle Eastern house learning an Eastern art I asked myself, "How are we using the confluential power of the city to expose people to the gospel?" Men, women and children are converging on Dakar and cities across Africa in search of hope and future. As much as we face opposition for our faith, we find ourselves in a city desperate for hope, searching for a future.

As the city grows so our efforts in planting the church must grow. Led by the Holy Spirit we must plant new churches among the existing neighborhoods, like Golf Sud, like Citie Alioune Sow, like Guédiawaye. Led by the Holy Spirit we must anticipate where the city is growing and place our feet squarely on the land. We must plant the church in the days, months and years to come on these streets that are never empty; these streets where men, women and children walk, ride and live.

the uptick of time

One by one people trickled in. Two by two they filled the rows and by the third song, lifted with swells of drums and voices, our small rented space was packed to capacity. Men, women and children pressed together to celebrate our church’s anniversary. The room overflowed to the point where all the children had to go up onto the roof to make room for everyone. Even still, members of our church gave up their seats to guests and sat in our courtyard singing in through the windows.

One year ago our small band of believers were gathered together on the top floor of a hotel. Now, located in the heart of Parcelles Assainies, we are seeing our church building filled to capacity on these celebration days.

Each celebration, every Christmas service and Easter morning, our church grows. Every anniversary and Pentecost our church reaches further into the community. Birthdays and anniversaries, holidays and festivals are important because they help us mark the passage of time.

We so easily lose ourselves in time. The mundane tasks drone from one day to the next. The months and years slip away. If we don’t stop to celebrate victories, great and small, we disillusion ourselves of our purpose and God’s glory. The grandeur of time and space can disjoint us from reality. The contemplation of eternity can give us headaches. Celebrations help us ground the steady uptick of time toward eternity.

This is nothing new. Our Creator, fully aware of our finite limitations, calls us to celebration and worship. In Numbers 28 the Lord lays out for Moses an anchor for the people as the waves of time wash by. Daily offerings rose up to the Lord like a pleasing aroma. A Sabbath day each week was set apart from the rest. Every month ushered in a new opportunity to glory in the presence of God, as the phases of the moon reflected the passage of time. And as each month brought closer a new year, a series of festivals were established to bring the people of God together in worship and celebration.

The new generation of God’s people were standing before Moses. Their numbers were fully counted. They were equipped with the direction to the promised land and how to rightly divide the land (Num. 26). And Joshua, their next leader was standing before them ready to lead the conquest (Num. 27). But chapter 28 isn’t about the next strategy to occupy the land. Chapter 28 isn’t the work of conquest. Chapter 28 is about celebration and worship.

We are preparing the church of Parcelles Assainies for a future that endures the good times and bad, the seasons of struggle and success. We are equipping them with the wisdom to celebrate in all the victories God brings our way, great or small, so that whether in hundreds or in ones, we are redeeming the time as we journey toward eternity (Eph. 5.16).

a third culture church

Daphne’s raised arms caused shades of light to fall across her blonde hair sticking to her tear-filled cheeks. Her lips poured out floods of worship as the Spirit of God washed over her. Her English words of praise mixed with the concert of French exaltations. Her small white face and little hands lifted among a glorious crowd of African brothers and sisters.

I watched as my oldest daughter met with the Spirit of God and the wonder of His presence in a new way. I thought of my own father as he stood in an African pulpit watching his son worshiping at the altar. Like a powerful missionary cycle carried from generation to generation; from missionary to missionary kid and back again.

From generation to generation we long to see Christ glorified, to see His name lifted high in the praises of every tongue and tribe. We long to see every people and every place our soles touch soil transformed by the presence of the Holy Spirit (Dt. 11.24). As a fellowship of missionaries we are creating a third culture as “we are pursuing God together, in the power of the Holy Spirit, for an increasingly redeemed and transformed Africa.”

Our third culture is born where we stand. We stand where heaven touches earth. Where the ladder of Jacob’s dream connected the heavenly presence of God to the hard ground of Earth (Gen. 28). Messengers sent up and down in brilliant light against the dark shades of night. We stand where the cross of Christ stands, rooted in the earth, lifting up the Son of glory. Where God reached down and made the way clear through his death, washed clean in his eternal life. We stand where Jesus ascends to His holy throne and speaks his message to the nations into our hearts.

As missionaries we are concerned about the effects of our obedience on the lives of our children. Because from the hour we land on distant shores our children cease to be monocultural kids. They are now embraced in a multicultural society that transforms their worldview forever. Displaced from their parents culture into the everyday foreignness of their new environments each missionary kid is pressed into creating a third culture, an assimilation of worldviews and reconciliation of cultures.

We are parents raising third culture kids and we are missionaries fostering a third culture church. As a father, watching my oldest daughter meeting the Spirit of God in this special way in this special place is a joyous moment for me because her worldviews and culture are being shaped. A little American girl worshiping with her older African brothers and sisters in Christ. Our family’s vision is to be a personal link from the local church to the unreached and watching our children encountering Christ among African followers of Jesus enlivens us all to carry forward the kingdom of God to those still far from the cross.

Here in Senegal our mission continues to be creating space to grow a movement and with hearts and spirits raised we are planting a third culture church made up of men, women and children, across generations, from across Africa and across the world. We are lifting our arms in praise and our voices in intercession for the nations still lost and peoples still unreached.

Led by the Spirit our third culture church is better prepared to relate to the lost nations, to assimilate worldviews and reconcile cultures. As a third culture church, the arms of American missionaries are linked with African leaders, and we rejoice in the increasingly redeemed and transformed Africa we have already seen. We pursue God together, in the power of the Spirit, into the resistant and unreached nations.

beyond a hammer's limit

The new year always affords us a fresh chance to begin again. January with its cool breezes brings with it an environment of newness. The beginning of a new year dawns like a farmer preparing to his fields for a new season. Even if we’ve led the same plow and team across the same field, the new season invites us in with an occasion to look afresh.

I’ve been reflecting on Abraham Maslow’s famous Law of the Instrument which he stated simply “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.”

As missionaries we know that our goal is to plant the church of Christ where the church has not been before. Like farmers at the plow lock their eyes on the far-end of the field, as missionaries we set our sights on the far end of history. We turn over the ground, sow the seed of the gospel and steadfastly set our eyes on Jesus, our eternal Lord.

But at times we set out to build the church with a simple hammer/nail mentality. We mistakenly believe that every problem, every challenge, every situation is a nail that must be hammered into submission. But as we mature we begin to recognize some things are not nails to be driven in, but clawed out. And other things are not nails at all! Rocks in a field must be dug out, and some strongholds must be torn down to make way for the kingdom. As powerful as a hammer may be some rocks need pickaxes and some strongholds need backhoes. Hammers have their limits.

Too late, we may find we’ve wasted our lives slowly hammering away at boulders, disregarding with our pounding stubbornness the Lord saying, “It is vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.” (Ps. 127.2a). I am more and more convinced that approaching the great mission of God with our weak little hammers of self does more disservice to the planting of His Church among the unreached and resistant peoples. We desperately need to Holy Spirit to imbue us with power and equip us with gifts and tools for ministry.

Hammers cannot replace apostles and prophets in building the Lord’s house. Hammers cannot do the work of an evangelist, pastor and teacher. Before us is a field ready to be worked, cultivated and bear fruit, but beneath the surface are stills old roots and boulders to be removed.

The work of destroying the boulders may be hard, but empowered by the Holy Spirit, we know that we are not laboring in vain. We can rest assured, as His beloved, we are equipped by His Spirit. We will not be put to shame in the presence of those that oppose us; and even more so, in our hard work He will give us rest.

wide open spaces

I am increasingly convinced that missionaries are modern-day cowboys. It may sound crazy but the more time I spend traveling across the transatlantic planes, chasing the sun around the globe, I’m more and more persuaded.

I’m not talking about the lone ranger types that roam the valleys in search of solitary justice. I’m talking about the men who rode in packs, crews of hardworking, hard-riding men who transversed the length and breadth of America guiding the herds.

Yes, I grew up in a Southern-gospel-country-music family. My ears grew up accustomed to the dulcet tones of Patsy Cline and the Gaither Vocal band. And yes, being from proud Southern Missourah stock I love the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Down the Mississippi and up the Nile I can’t count the times I’ve journeyed around the world (including all those times as a hop-along missionary kid with my mom and dad). But that’s not why I think missionaries are the natural descendants of the old West cowboys.

I believe that missionaries are modern-day cowboys because we long for wide open spaces. We long to name the unnamed.

Its not just the sweet African valleys peppered with acacia trees and Baobabs. Not just the cattle that still roam the fields (and city streets for that matter). Not just the vistas and the views.

The life of a cowboy is one where a man and woman can put their shoulders into the work. It’s where the impossible is possible. Where the desert gives way to the oasis. Where dreams can still be dreamed under the wide open skies.

Isaac the son of Abraham did his own share of cowboy roaming (Gen. 26). He drove his herds to a new valley and settled there. And it seemed like every time Isaac (the Ancient Near Eastern Gary Cooper) tried to put down his roots somebody was pushing him along, eyeing his herd, eyeing his wife, eyeing his wells.

He’d dig a well and people would show up to claim it. So he’d dig another and more folks came round to dispute his claims. So our cowboy pulled up stacks and moved along. He came to a new place, dug a new well and this time no one came, no farmers or Philistines, robber barrens or Amorites.

He called the place Rehoboth. The Lord makes room.

God made room for Isaac. He made room for his kids and his cattle. He provided a wide open space for Isaac to name.

As missionaries, crew-riding cowboys, we pass through difficulties and dangers seeking out the place where the herd can graze and grow. We are looking for the fields that are ripe with fresh grass and clear clean water.

We live in villages and cities, we travel through rainforests and deserts, we speak in a thousand broken tongues so that we might find the places ready to be named. We ride like Paul who found wide open doors in Ephesus to plant the church (1 Cor. 16.9).

As a new year begins Elise and I want to thank you for letting us be a personal link from the local church to the unreached. Thank you for making our obedience possible to find wide open spaces and name the unnamed.

baptized by waves

One foot at a time. One foot in front of the other.

Every missionary loves the great commission. Jesus stood on the mountainside surrounded by His disciples; encircled by the men, women and children who had chosen to walk His path, to follow His voice, to practice His resurrection.

Go.

Make disciples of all nations.

One foot at a time.

I remember my short twelve year-old legs walking into the rolling waves, in a group of new followers of Jesus, alongside my father. Looking toward the shore we saw a great cloud of witnesses standing beneath a canopy of tropic green, celebrating our confession. I stood there shoulder-deep awaiting resurrection.

My life is the product of a missionary who heard the Lord say, "Go and make disciples." Surrounded by the nations, men and women from Guineano tribes, I was baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

One foot in front of the other.

Our feet carried us to Northeastern Africa. We walked down into the Nile baptizing, and celebrated the public confession that comes through discipleship. We have brothers and sisters in the deserts of closed countries because men and women heard the Lord say, "Go and make disciples." Today we lift our praise together with people who have heard the good news of the Messiah, men and women who have been baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

One foot at a time.

From the heart of Parcelles Assainies, one of the most populous arteries of Dakar, we made our way from the church to the shore. Before a cloud of witnesses, six men and women stood facing toward the crowded buildings along the coast and confessed the Lordship of Christ.

One foot in front of the other.

Our toes slipped into the shifting sand. Our feet, our knees, our waists submerged under the rich blue waves rimmed with white foam. Our bodies rocked by hard waves. Our eyes tight as sun rays pierced through the sky and bounced off the water like crystals.

We walked down into the breaking waves, backs braced and feet set against the surging sheets of water peeling away from the undertow. Half swallowed by the waves we baptized them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the heavy lifting waves we found ourselves sharing in their baptism, soaked with resurrection, filled with rejoicing. We lifted up our brothers and sisters before the watching world as new creations, peace-filled peacemakers, reconciled sons and daughters called to the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5.17-18). We stood there, drenched in resurrection, commissioned ambassadors for Christ.

And now, their new journey begins anew—disciples called to go and make disciples—to the unreached frontiers. One foot in front of the other. One foot at a time.

a window to heaven

Do we ever doubt the power of God?

We've all had those wonderful experiences resting in His presence on a Sunday morning. The music lifts the poetry of our praise to the heavens like incense coolly rising from the ash and embers. We rejoice looking toward the sky. Our eyes might see stage lighting and the soft color of faraway stucco but none of these can distract us from our upward gaze and serene worship.

But what if the ceiling fell out?

I was looking at the drop ceiling in our largest room at the church, the room where we've been gathering on Sunday mornings. The heavy plaster was drooping, pulling at sagging concrete like an impetuous child on a tired mothers arm. We spoke with the landlord and removed the ornate canopy. As relieving as it was to see the heavy blanket above our heads gone it exposed a network of cricks and cracks. We roped off the sanctuary and moved into the smaller room, packing in like sardines in the hottest, most humid time of year.

The landlord promised he would come and make the repairs. Days joined days forming weeks. Nearly a month passed on the promise that he was coming. Every day I looked up at that ceiling nervously; that larger room, enviously; the electrical sockets and fans we'd installed, longingly.

Waiting.

Doubting.

One sweaty Sunday after service a large piece broke free from its rusty rebar prison and smashed with its full force into the tile below. I felt my heart sink and shatter like the bludgeoned ceramic tile.

And then something miraculous happened! The building owner flew into action. He rushed to the church with a crew of workmen with new support beams and hardhats, who immediately began tearing away the dilapidated roof.

Looking up from our sanctuary and seeing blue sky was worshipful. That sagging ceiling had hung heavily around my shoulders, worrying me about what might happen if a piece rained down during worship; questioning, even after we'd roped off the area if a child might wander in under the precarious roofing. In a small, almost excusable way, I had begun to doubt. A snowball effect of more unlikely events that exposed the cracks in my own belief. As if the building were falling down around us my heart began to question if we would ever see revival.

And then the ceiling fell out.

Something that should have sunk my emotions deeper opened up the heavens, like an open window exposing the limitless power of God. I stood there looking through the open ceiling of our church with all my doubt laid bare. I'd felt like the people of Israel returned home from exile to a kingdom with no king, a promised land with barren vines. They sat in their homes doubting the power of God and started robbing the Lord of their tithe, their worship, their trust.

And then the word of God broke through the ceiling of the heavens. Through His prophet Malachi He threw down a concrete declaration challenging their doubt, challenging their faith. He called His people to bring in their tithe and offering, to step out in faith and believe.

And God still challenges us today. He calls to believe, to trust, to hope. Even now Jesus is creating windows through peeling plaster and bending rebar to pour down His blessings, His promises, revival. We rejoice in the broken, even as we rejoice in the rebuilding. We rejoice as we wait for the floodgates to burst through and the Lord pours out revival.

electric glow

"I have seen the smoke from the campfires of a thousand villages where the name of Christ has never been proclaimed."

I love that image. The great missionary Robert Moffat looked out across the velds of South Africa and his heart cried out for the unreached nations before him. The smoke rising up across the horizon was a constant reminder that the task was unfinished. With every flame came a spiraling cloud. A thousand tribes of men, women and children circling around the fires and from the distance he watched as those signal fires marked out the nations.

I have seen the smoke.

Moffat had followed the call of God into missions as a young man, spurred forward by the testimonies from Moravian missionaries, stories he heard sitting at his mother’s knee. His soul shook with an unquenchable passion to reach those nations and proclaim the name of Jesus.

I have seen the smoke.

Every time I read these words my soul leaps into action. I’m stirred to prayer and spurred to reach unreached villages. But Africa has changed so much in the last two centuries since Moffat first arrived in January of 1817. There are still villages and there are still fires. There are still spirals of smoke rising up across the African plains and desert dunes where the name of Jesus Christ has never been proclaimed.

And now there are great cities, major African metropolises where millions of men, women and children from distant fires are converging. Unreached peoples from closed countries who do not gather around the fire but sit beneath the soft fluorescent glow of electric light.

I have seen the smoke. And I have seen the soft glow of electric light spilling from a thousand African apartments where the name of Christ has never been proclaimed. Many nights I arrive at church as the sun sinks into the ocean and I watch as the electric glow of lights begin to ignite. I think of the mothers and fathers, like many generations before, gathering their sons and daughters to hear their tales. They listen to stories in their languages through the illuminated box by the wall. They sway to the songs in their own tongue through the radio with its tilted silver antennae at the corner store.

I have seen the soft glow of electric light spilling from a thousand African apartments where the name of Christ has never been proclaimed and my heart weeps, it shakes, it trembles with the passion and the pain. There is a passion to hear the name of Jesus lifted up on each corner, in each building, each home. There is a pain because today we have not created space between us to share the life and love of Jesus.

I have seen the soft glow and my heart leaps for joy because every day we are pursuing our mission of creating space to grow a movement. Every day we plant His church deeper into the soil of Dakar.  Every day we are closer to telling His story in Wolof through our church and new creative media. Every day we are closer to new songs in their own tongue that proclaim the name of Jesus into the lives of millions of urban unreached. Every day I see the soft glow and rejoice because you are praying for us and interceding with us for the nations.

touching fire

A few weeks ago I was standing on the rooftop of our church along the northern shore of Dakar. Our Sunday morning celebration was minutes away from beginning and I went up to inspect the construction of our children’s area underneath a veranda. My eyes were drawn by the deep blue of the ocean peaking through black crisscrossing electrical wires strung between beige concrete buildings and ramshackle constructions along a dirt alley.

I walked closer to the edge and looked down as hundreds of people moved up and down, left and right; men, women and children busy in the meandering tasks of morning. I was stirred that for every hundred faces and frames moving along the roads, ninety six of them have never heard the gospel. My heart began to cry out in intercession that our church would be planted firmly in the heart of this community and bring many unreached nations to Jesus.

Looking down I noticed two small boys, dressed in blue standing on our sandy stoop, peering in as the people gathered to worship. As the boys looked in through our open door I prayed. I prayed for us, that we would be living expressions of God’s love in their lives. I prayed them, that they would come to know Jesus and His kingdom that cannot be shaken.

All of a sudden the pierce sound of a woman shouted at the boys. Laden with a baby woven to her back in a bright colored wrap was a woman who had been watching the two boys intrigued by our presence. She shouted from across the street at the boys as if they were in danger of being hit by a car. “Careful!” she yelled as if they were playing with fire, a match in one hand and a spraying aerosol can in the other. “Careful!” And flailed her arms to shoo them away from the flames.

It all happened so quickly. The boys turning toward her bewildered and then ever so slowly walking away from our open door. As they retreated toward the street the woman continued to glance back to ensure their safety. I was left standing there, alone; the rooftop witness of a drive-by quelling. That woman’s voice echoing in my ears her warning, as if we were ablaze, the building spitting flames, our lives on fire.

But the more I reflect on that event the more she’s right! We are on fire. We serve a God who is an all consuming fire (Heb. 12.19). And unlike the people of Israel we are not warned from coming near His presence (Ex. 19.21). The Holy Spirit of the living God has fallen upon us like fire from heaven and the smoke of His presence raises up from our church like smoke from a kiln, like smoke from an unquenchable fire, like a smoke signal to the nations.

We have access to the very presence of the Sovereign God, we have access through our Lord and Savior Jesus who has placed His blazing Spirit within us. So, as the writer of Hebrews put it “let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire,” and the nations are watching.

goading gamaliels

This month I found myself in the book of Acts.

In my devotions I read those captivating words as the Spirit of God moved over the church before the gazing nations outside the upper room. Then with my own eyes watched as the Spirit moved over the men, women and children of our new church.

I saw our new believers living with the peace and joy that only comes from intimacy with God. Our new brother is faithful in attending services and drinking deeply of our Bible studies. And our new sister, after a time of traveling to the southern region of the country with her father, came into our home quick to embrace Elise, the kids and I with a smile that radiated with the peace that passes all understanding.

Our home has been a revolving door of young men and women that we have had the privilege of connecting with over the past year and a half. One young lady whose family had moved to a religious city in the interior of the country came to see us the other night, and brought four more friends to meet Elise! Another young man who had returned to the village came to see me and even brought two other friends along with him.

I read in Acts 5 how Peter and the apostles had been arrested and put in prison. My imagination came alive as the angel of the Lord opened the jail cell doors and led them out into the Temple courts. I stood with them before the high priest and religious leaders and heard as the aged Gamaliel called for them to be removed.

The words of Gamaliel rushed my heart with whispered words and determined prayers for men and women like Gamaliel here in Senegal. He stood for the apostles even though he didn’t know them. He spoke in their defense even though he didn’t agree with them. He placed the responsibility of discernment and judgment back at the foot of God’s throne.

I began to pray the Lord would give us Gamaliels. Little did I know I was about to meet one! Before we held our first service in our new building we wanted to meet with our neighborhood chief. Recognizing local chiefs is very important even in our modern urban setting.

My associate pastor, an elder and I searched through the labyrinthian sand streets until we finally discovered his home. He stood up from a group of elders, put in his hearing aid and gave us an audience. Along with a gift of the New Testament in Wolof we gave him words of respect and expressed our desire to worship Jesus in his district.

To no surprise he had already heard about us and had been waiting to see if we would come before we began meeting in the building. He opened his mouth with a proverb: “When you come into the house you should come through the door.” He said because we had come through the door we would always have his favor and respect and full freedom to worship in his district of Parcelles Assainies.

As we continue to live the book of Acts in Africa we know that with every new contact, with every new friend we bring to Jesus we will face the swarming of the Sanhedrin. And so we pray and ask you to join us in prayer as we are goading Gamaliels and growing the church.