unglamorous redemption

At the name of Jesus she fainted.

Elise and I have had a young Senegalese woman watch the twins while we’ve been in language study. Over the past year we’ve had incredible Christ-centered, life-seeking conversations with her. Each word brought us closer to her, every word brought her closer to Jesus.

Her father recently returned from the village with a new host of idols and enchanted amulets. In the past she has resisted these broken-down magics but, as the light and darkness battled over her soul, she consented to his demands. When she came back to work we noticed a difference, she was working as if she were under a cloud. She became more and more distant, more and more muted, more and more lost to us.

One day her face looked pale as her back sagged against a wall. I called to Elise to come and pray for her. Elise placed her hand on Mariam’s* shoulder and began to pray. She said the name of Jesus and Miriam collapsed into her lap.

Looking at her pale face we knew we needed to find a clinic for her and have someone look at her. We called Elaine, a trained nurse (she and Rick are our neighbors and fellow Potomac missionaries). Elaine examined her and then we began to pray for Mariam. As we prayed her body began to revolt, convulsing as spirits waged battle in her small frame. Rick, using his many years of ministry in West Africa and practiced French asked her if she was wearing any charms. With the help of Elise and Elaine she removed the witchcraft from around her waist and arms. We prayed over her to deliverance.

With a weak yet free voice she called out to Jesus as her Savior. She gave her life to Jesus next to the door of the broom closet. In our home we witnessed a Senegalese woman from an unreached people group cry out to Jesus for salvation. Feebly we walked with her into the drive way as she struck a match and burned those bondage bracelets. Then we loaded into our Speed the Light vehicle and drove this sister in Christ home. We took her home to her family, but in a very real way, we introduced them to a reborn daughter of God.

Often we focus on the victorious end, the majesty of summer, the vibrant warmth of harvest, but life is not only summer. Before the summer harvest was the planting in spring. And before the spring was the cold of winter. With each new believer there is story, a journey through the seasons. We bathe the battle in the glory of the victory because the battle isn’t glamorous. The journey from sin to the cross is not beautiful, it’s warped and scarred because even Christ’s journey to the cross was unglamorous, beaten, broken. But once we arrive at the cross, we find our twisted trek has now become a unique testimony of unglamorous redemption. Beautiful, real restoration. At the name of Jesus we collapse into His wonderful atonement.

tale of two strongholds

A great missionary told us before we arrived here, “The church has not grown as quickly because the strongholds have never been broken.” Those are intimidating words to hear from giants of faith who have seen countless churches planted and millions of lives reborn across Africa. But as much as we could hope her words are an overstatement they ring painfully true.

Driving through the streets of Dakar we see an absence of churches. We see an absence of Christ-centered influence in the marketplace, the business world, the daily lives of men, women and children. Just the other day driving around with two plumbers the tension of a placating peace staled the gospel-driven conversation. We listened together to gospel music from Equatorial Guinea as I translated the lyrics for them from Spanish into Wolof and the conversation stalled. A shroud of a dark stronghold seemed to cloud over their eyes.

In the past few months we have seen more destabilizing efforts worked out from the hands of wicked men who seek to establish a chaotic reign against “the slaves of the cross.” As I read those words in the news I couldn’t think of a higher compliment we could be paid by blind men than to be called slaves of the cross; people anchored before the world to the cross, the strong tower where we are made new, freed, forgiven.

Living in a post-monarchy society we lose a lot from our biblical understanding. Things that the psalmist assumed in common day experience are lost in our democracies and modern day figurehead crowns. In their place we have images of bipartisan politics powered by special interests or heartless dictatorships that rule by fear and oppression. This makes it difficult for us to grasp the Kingship of Christ in our everyday lives. We are muddied with disinterested despots, or worse, malicious ones.

Jesus is our King, but as is always the case with Christ, He is more. He is our stronghold. He is our place of safety, our means of protection. He is our refuge from the bedlam of our lives and tumult of our world. He is our Sovereign King in whose Kingdom we dwell, and with His glorious compassion He Himself is our fortress. Jesus is our indestructible citadel of comfort. Jesus is our abiding presidio of peace. He has placed our joy within His incorruptible arms.

Jesus the stronghold has placed our lives within Himself. He is our light in the dark night of the soul. He is our salvation from the burnout and brokenness that seeks to find us all. Jesus is our assurance in the face of life’s fears. Jesus in our confidence in the chaos. Even in the heat of battle we can take rest in that. Jesus is our stronghold!

And this truth remains: no other stronghold can stand in His presence. All other strongholds must fall. They may take 50 years, they may appear insurmountable, but they will fall. They will crumble before Jesus the Messiah because locked behind those human constructs and demonic fabrications are people. There are men, women and children who have been made to worship Jesus. He is calling them home, and He has called us to be His voice crying in the wilderness, to be the personal link from the local church to the unreached.

chasing more than windmills

I’ve never been especially good at chess. I’m fascinated by the game but I still remain no Bobby Fischer. Over the years I’ve tried to convince myself to study the game, to engross myself with stratagems and tactics, but as far as I’ve gotten has been learning the rules and how the pieces move.

My notion to master the game came back as I was reading a biography on the life of Miguel de Cervantes (the famed Spanish author of Don Quixote). I discovered he spent several years in Algeria as a slave. Purchased by a cruel and unpredictable dictator he survived because of his skill at chess. At any time he could have been freed if only he recanted Christ and followed after the faith of his Turkish master. For five years he lived like a pawn, far from home and family, and suffered several failed escape attempts.

Sitting at a friend’s house a couple weeks ago as we were preparing the afternoon tea I was invited to play chess. They rolled out the checkered board and we began to place the pieces. As we sat on the ground, the smell of charcoal under the tin kettle mingled with the spiced smell of steeped tea, my mind began to fill with images of the thin Spaniard sitting across an ornate table, senses filled with incense and turbans. I couldn’t help but think of the witness Cervantes gave to his captor every day he sat stalwart in his faith, every day he moved the pieces across the chessboard, his slave hands playing the game of kings.

One of my friends began to explain the deep importance that chess played for them as Muslims. It prepares them for life, for war, equips them with strategy for victory. As we sat drinking our tea our conversation turned to Christ. With the chessboard by my foot, I felt the pressure so many have before, to win the lost through strategy and argument. As my friends began to ply me with leading questions, questions that would lead me toward their religious conclusions I found myself pushing away from strategy and schemes. As we talked about Adam & Eve, Abraham and the God of Abraham I pressed my heart and our conversation toward Christ. My goal was not to win a theological argument and lose the soul across the board. I would rather see myself with the slain king at our feet. My friends had come equipped for combat, but how could I rise up against them?

As we concluded our hours of incredible Christ-seeking discussion I prayed for them in Jesus name. One of the men looked at me afterwards and surprisingly said, “I am the talibe, you are the warekat. (I am the disciple and you are the preacher).” May the Lord make these words true.

Thank you for sending us here, like pawns for Christ, as a personal link from the local church to the unreached. Pray that we would see that entire family come to know Jesus as the conquering King. The true Warekat, the Sovereign Word.

crumbled walls, conquering King

The phone rang. We were deep in the packed traffic of a downtown Saturday and at first I didn’t hear the phone over the cacophony of car horns and revving buses. On the phone was our friend who pastors the storefront church we have called home here in Senegal. With one hand on the wheel, the other shifting gears through the erratic speeds of the streets, Elise held the phone to my ear as he told me the Mayor had destroyed the church building. At first I wasn’t sure I was hearing him correctly, but later that day when I was able to make my way over to the area all that stood as a remnant to the church was a pile of rubble and exposed rebar bent toward the heavens.

Those crumbled walls were difficult to look at. There in a mass of nothing was where our family first fellowshipped with Senegalese believers. In those yellow walls stained by water of raining seasons gone by we lifted our voices to worship the King of kings. Through the open doorway I had looked out over the uneven dirt road and watched as lost men, women and children skirted earthen mud puddles yet blind to eternity.

In the face of visible destruction, emotional loss and powerlessness we drift toward detachment. We cannot imagine a restoration great enough to reestablish our footing. And yet we know there is more. Even in the sorrow, even in the confusion, even in the face of the tides of time we know there is more. We know that beneath the disturbed ground, the unsettled soul, the finite weakness there stands a foundation unshakeable.

We know that our unshakeable foundation is Christ the Lord. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him,” (Col. 1.15-16). The walls may crumble but His throne remains.

And so the following Sunday we stood in a new building, a new gathering place. We stood up and we opened our hearts to worship the Lord who is building His kingdom (1 Pet. 2.5). Day by day, our Lord Jesus is placing His feet into every corner of Dakar, and he does that even through our displacement. He is reconciling to Himself the lost.

We can lift our arms like reinforced steel before the Lord among the nations. Bent and twisted from the chaos that comes, out footing remains in the firm foundation of Jesus. Thank you for lifting your arms with us as we reach the unreached, as we create space to see men, women and children meet with the Savior.

the God of the busted tire

I’ve come to believe that our Lord is the God of the busted tire. Looking back over my automotive life it seems that God has continuously taken His glory from my use of the internal combustion engine to meet new people.

In college driving across the country, from the buckle of the Bible belt to the right hip pocket of the East coast, I had a tire explode. Before I knew it, I was sharing Life with a gas station attendant in the middle of the Indiana cornfields.

In Northeastern Africa, after someone had shattered a side window to rob us I found myself sitting in the middle of the “glass market” having a replacement made. Over small cups of tea I shared the providence of Jesus with a man the Lord brought across my diverted path.

A few weeks ago, as Elise and I were on our way to pick up our older two from school I felt the car drooping in the back. Stepping down from our formidable Speed the Light Toyota Fortuner I discovered that our tire had lost its jovial rotund appearance.

As I began to replace the tire several of our neighbors came to help. I had a beautiful mixture of emotions: frustration at my blackening hands replacing a new tire with another new tire, joy that our community is truly grafting us into their everyday lives, and surprise. Surprise because one of the men who came to help was new to me. As we shared time in the dirt we got to know each other.

A few days later he came over to our house with his little brother and they invited us to their home for a large celebration that commemorates when God called on Abraham to sacrifice His son.

The day of the celebration came and we went to his home, just a few steps down from ours, but worlds apart. We went to the back door where the women were busy pounding the spices into the onions and mustard. The men were busy butchering the slaughtered sheep. Elise and I began helping prepare the meal. I was even given the first bite, a large chunk of thick sheep liver covered in the onion-mustard concoction.

Over the “second breakfast” after noon, as the house was filled with eight young men and numerous young ladies we began to talk about the reason God demanded Abraham offer up his son as a sacrifice. What an awesome privilege to share the story from the Bible where God blessed Abraham with a son of promise. How God called Abraham to lay down all his hope and future at the altar. How our faithful and loving God placed a substitute in Isaac’s place.

And how that same God, our Sovereign God who is one, divinely three in one, stepped into the brokenness of humanity and became the perfect sacrifice and He has made eternally perfect those who are being made holy who through His sacrifice (Heb. 10.12-14). And I got to share this, all of this because of a busted tire. Truly, He is the God of the busted tire.

May he bust your tire today too.

four foot foundations

We build monuments. Around the world, from the most advanced societies to the cultures recessed in the deeps of the rainforests, people build symbols of community. As complex as a gateway Arch that rises to greet you driving across the great Mississippi and as simple as stacked rocks, we build monuments. Through the work of our hands we seek to express the currents of our souls. As Norman Foster has said, “Architecture is an expression of values.”

And so I found myself once again on the island of Goree, one of the major hubs of the transatlantic slave trade, with a group of men and women from Cornerstone Assembly of God. They had crossed the same ocean to come and share a week with us reaching the unreached Wolof speaking people of Senegal. We stood together staring at the brick and mortar, the colonial monuments of human oppression, where countless lives were fractured and broken for untold generations. Although the island no longer ferries people from freedom to slavery, the buildings still stand, the monuments of humanities devastating capacity still lingers.

But in the midst of the weeping, the deep and painful sorrow, the stark difference shown through like a piercing lightning bolt through the stormy night. This group, this group of men and women, black, white, European, Caribbean, African, crossed the Atlantic not to take men captive but to set them free. They came flying through the night, not to bind men and rip them from their homes, but to stand in the light of day and proclaim the love of Jesus the Messiah. Day after day, we poured our love with every paint stroke restoring a community school, every word spilled from our cups running over, every smile offered to a child and returned.

We build monuments. Not houses of slavery but homes of freedom. We build altars. Not of brick and mortar but of lives transformed. Our architecture, built of men, women and children on the foundation of our redeemer Jesus Christ is the truest expression of value. We are not calling them with the doomed words of the builders of Babel (Gen. 11.3), but to recognize that the stone the builders rejected has now become the chief cornerstone which is Jesus Christ (Ps. 118.22)! Every religious leader whom we spoke with between the muddy furrows of our neighborhood, every youth that heard the good news of a Savior in Guediawaye, every child who memorized the sweet words of John 3.16… monuments.

Truly, because of this team, each short little child that has begun to make a lifelong decision for Christ now stands like a monument to Love, like a little four foot foundation of Jesus in their family.

crafting catherdrals

I stole a few minutes during a conference I was speaking at recently, with pastors from churches around Dakar and as far inland as Thies, to read a few pages of poetic lines by Henry Newbolt (I’ll be honest I’ve never heard of Newbolt before but with a name like that I had to give him a few minutes audience). Newbolt, his words are as martial and action-packed as his name. On the last page I discovered a poem called The Building of the Temple dedicated to the Canterbury Cathedral. He wrote:
   "Let us build for the years we shall not see…
    Let us build in hope and in sorrow, and rest in Thee."

Our forefathers a hundred years ago spoke vision of “the greatest evangelization that the world has ever seen,” but would they have imagined today’s 76 million men, women and children reached with the gospel in a century? They were a generation who believed if they committed their work to the Lord He would establish their plans (Prov. 16.3). On the foundation of Christ they built the walls of prayer and passion for a cathedral of praise where millions have met with Jesus.

Have you heard the story of three men working on a construction site? The first was asked what he was doing and he replied, “I’m laying bricks.” The next man responded, “I’m building a wall.” But the third man when asked the question, looked to the skies and with a smile said, “I’m building a cathedral.”

What do we believe? When we look at the labor of our hearts and hands what do we see? What would you say? We are not just laying brick, together we are laying the cornerstone, Christ Jesus, among the unreached. We are not just building a wall, we are laying a foundation of gospel witness among unreached families. With rolled-up sleeves we are, with sweat on our brow and prayer in our hearts, digging out out the cultural and religious strongholds to lay a foundation which is Christ the Lord (1 Cor. 3.11). And even with eyes lifted to heaven we are not just building a cathedral, we are creating space to grow a movement where men, women and children can meet with our Savior, Jesus.

Many of us will never see on this side of eternity the fruit of our labors in prayer, the produce of hours cultivating the world’s fields in intercession. Many of us will never stand face to face here on earth with the countless millions that have come to know Jesus as their Lord through our sacrificial giving. Nevertheless, through the hope and sorrow, through the passion and the pain, let us build the Church and rest in the glory of our God. Thank you for working with us and allowing us to be a personal link from the local church to the unreached.

creating culture

Life is full of adventure. Even the smallest things can be exciting when we see them peppered with the uncertainty of human experience. One would think the simple act of preparing dinner for her family would be uneventful until the electricity spends almost equal measures of time being off as it does being on (leaving the delicious contents of the fridge untouched), and the adventure begins. Or a preacher taking the elementary act of stepping into the pulpit would seem routine, but this time words come more cautiously because (although he’s practiced each line, each word repeatedly) everything is different. The heart and passion are the same but the language is new; an adventure in every syllable.

For Elise and I this month has been a proving appraisal of our family’s mission of “creating space to grow a movement.” No matter how long we’ve lived in Africa the challenges of wise stewardship, like stewarding food in cold storage while living in an area of town known universally for its flexible relationship with electricity, never gets easier. We sit in the dark with a faint glow of a candle more evenings now, sweating in the heat of the night, to see the first church planted in this neighborhood. And not just the first church, but a church planting movement born from a passion to create culture.

After preaching the first time in Senegal I told the pastor of the church the next time I would preach in Wolof. I thought he would wait longer but within a matter of weeks he was ready for me to step into the pulpit again, and after only 153 days in Senegal, my promise sent me into an interpretive frenzy! I could more easily preach in English and sought out help in translation, but to create space in which we more readily engage the Wolof in their own culture, it must happen in their own language. Even now, as I write these words I am writing a second Wolof message to ring in the new month.

In the middle of all that our family had the adventure of my traveling to the central African island of my parent’s missionary calling. It is inspiring to be back in the first church my parent’s planted, the first of its kind ever born on Guineano soil. And it is worship-inducing that after less than 30 years to see now over 80 churches throughout the country. It is humbling to see pastors come from distant villages along the coastline and mountain crests to hear me bring a passionate plea for their partnership in reaching the unreached peoples of this world, like the Wolof. It is unequivocally culture creating to bear the shared mantle of global responsibility to carry the Gospel to the humanity made in the image of God.

The truth is life is full of adventure, of new experiences. Opening the door each morning can just as easily yield itself to adventure as it can to the mundane unvarying rhythms we so often create around ourselves. What will you create in your intercession and interactions? What adventure will you live today?

an unclouded sky

Over the past several years the Lord has continuously spoken to my heart through the life and work of Vincent van Gogh. A strange channel of contemplation I know, but the beauty of his artistic style are all the more compounded by the reality of his early life as a pastor’s kid and his failure as a missionary. In the hall of our new home we have two replicas of his work which has traveled the globe with us, and the other The Sower. It hangs by the door that leads from our home into the streets of our unreached city as a reminder to cast the seed of His Good News on every part of the field into which the Master has sent us.

You can only imagine my surprise and excitement then when, as Elise and I were walking through a collective of artists, with carvings and curios, jewelry and material on display, I thought I saw the Starry Night. Possibly the most famous painting by van Gogh but this particular painting had been reproduced in an African setting. In place of the towering Cypress tree stands a dark Baobab tree. Instead of the quaint European hamlet sleeps a West African village.

After the artist and I wrangled on a good price I brought it home and placed it in our living room. I pulled together my books on van Gogh and began to do a side-by-side comparison of the pieces. What had the Senegalese artist changed? Why had he changed it? What pieces of the original didn’t fit into the image of an African starry night.

At the heart of the piece, a solitary structure struck my eye. Its presence in the heart of the original I had never noticed, but in its absence on the African plain was glaring. It was the cathedral. The church at the heart of the Southern French village with its spire reaching toward the unclouded sky had no counterpart in the African interpretation. Of all the huts, gathered in groups and scattered across the illuminated valley the center of the space of the canvas is blank. No cathedral. No spire. No church.

When I look at the map of this nation the artist’s depiction is in perfect keeping with most villages, and my heart breaks. When I go out into the streets of our corner of the city, where 1.5 million men, women and children call home, but there are no cathedrals of praise, no spires rising in witness, no churches gathered in worship my soul weeps.

We are so blessed to be your personal link from the local church to the unreached Wolof-speaking peoples. In the years to come, as our shared intercession rises up before the Lord for these unreached men, women and children I pray we would offer up a new painting reflecting the shift, reflecting the change, reflecting the created space that grew a movement of African people into the presence of Christ below an unclouded sky.

transfigured witness

"But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Rise, and have no fear.’ And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only," (Mt. 17.7-8).

Jesus only. If you had one message, one opportunity with limited words to speak into the life of a church, what would you say? If you were invited to give voice to Truth into the heart of a man, woman or child yet-to-recognize Jesus as the Messiah, to which Scripture would you lead them? What words would you speak into and over their lives?

I stepped into the pulpit here on this Western Coast for the first time. Like so many pulpits across North, East and Central Africa, standing alongside so many African brothers (who transform my halting words effortlessly into their linguistic equivalents of Arabic, Swahili, Spanish, French and now Wolof) I opened my mouth to speak. And so as if this moment journeying between Easter and Pentecost were fleeting, I called the congregation to prayer. I bowed my body down behind the wooden frame below view, with the word of God burning in my heart, hearing the studied words of the transfiguration echoing in my soul.

What a beautiful and profound passage of God’s word where we see our Immanuel, our God with us, in His celestial glory. Atop a high mountain we see His face radiating more brilliantly than the sun. And enveloped in the cloud of the Holy Spirit we hear the voice of God the Father, which spoke the sun into being, and we see the Triune God resplendent in majesty. Like Peter, James and John laid low to the ground could we do anything but fall on our faces and tremble.

What a privilege to give witness to the transfigured Lord in a Senegalese storefront church, competing with the sound of taxi horns and barreling trucks. Transfixed there on a mountain top with His three closest disciples, and surrounded here by African men, women and children who have embraced the cross on this coastal shore, we sense Jesus’ presence. We feel His gentle hand as He says, “Jogleen, bullon ragal dara.” He says, “Levez-vous, n'ayez pas peur.” He says, “Rise and have no fear.”

Today, as we lift our prayerful eyes, from the rocks of a high Mid-Eastern mountain, from our African wooden church bench, from our American church office desk, do we see Jesus only? The Son of God who is the Son of Man. The Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, who calls us close and calls us friend.

Today, do we hear Jesus’ words, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father,” (Mt. 13.43)? He is calling us to transformed lives, to transfigured living. Do we hear the Spirit of God saying, “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever,” (Dan 12.3). He is calling us to live a transfigured witness from DC to Dakar and from Mbour to Baltimore.