eyes on home

What is home?

We could spend hours with dictionary definitions and not find a true understanding of home. Words like “a permanent dwelling” or “where one is the member of a family” fall short.

For the past several months we looked for a place for our church to call home. Countless searches throughout the densely populated neighborhood of Parcelles Assainies yield numerous short-lived prospects. Houses and buildings of all shapes and sizes filled with potential disappeared once we revealed we are planting a church. The Jim Reeves melody “This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through” echoed in my ears with every rejection. So we kept looking and kept returning to our rented hotel room.

In that upper room we found our core identity. We received our church vision to “Experience the Presence of God Among the Nations.” We felt the hands of the Lord building us together as His spiritual house made of living stones. We raised our hands in rented rooms and grew in heart, embraced in the love of our Father.

In that hired hall we confessed Jesus as our Lord and were joined by a new brother who laid his life at the foot of the cross. He is now joining several more young people who are preparing to be baptized. We lifted up our voices in intercession for the lost around us and our neighbors began having dreams of Jesus. For one, Jesus opened a door before her and washed the room with radiant light. For another Jesus stood before Him in holy fire with arms outstretched. For another young woman suffering with sickness Jesus reached down to her. Looking on his face she asked him who he was. He said, “I am Jesus, your healer.”

These are lost men and women comfortably fixed in families. They have four walls that shield them. They have tightly held membership under family names. But the revealed presence of Jesus exposes the discomfort of Christ-less houses. Their hearts cry out for something more. Not just a place to sleep and eat and share physical similarities. They are searching for home because home has to be more than where we live. Home must be where we come alive.

The last Sunday of June we celebrated our final service in the hotel. In our hands we have a brand new contract for a home in the heart of our community, near a large market and on a main road. The day we dedicated our building we were just a few; 52 men, women and children. A core group. A core family. A home of 52 surrounded by millions. Millions who are waiting. Millions who have yet to hear the love of our Father God and see the risen face of our Lord Jesus. Millions who have yet to experience home.

Thank you for making it possible for us to plant a place where unreached men, women and children can hear the Father’s call to come home.

a love like beer

He came staggering down the street, drifting from right to left as he wandered forward in halting awkward steps. The afternoon sun was hidden behind a thick layer of gray clouds but that didn’t stop his bloodshot eyes from focusing on the cases of beer in the open tailgate of truck in front of us. The drunk man teetered there entranced watching as the bartender hauled out the first case.

Being back at home in Equatorial Guinea is always a full experience; the deep rainforest greens and heavy humidity embraces you like a long lost relative and the beautiful and isolated sound of Spanish being spoken on the Central coasts of Africa. As much as things have changed in the passing of years, mirrored high-rise buildings where there were once only cocoa fields, much has stayed the same.

He stood there, puttering in his inebriation as he stared at the full cases, slowly drifting with the current of his own thoughts. In that moment he became a symbol of the Equatorial Guinea of my childhood, a figure of the spiritual emptiness so many still experience in my hometown. As I watched his profile I could almost read his eyes. If he could help carry those crates of alcohol into the bar maybe, just maybe, they would let him drink some for free.

He lurched over to the back of the truck and carried in a case. Triumphantly he returned to the truck to transport another. His leaned-forward face and uneven steps spoke of a thirst, a dedication, a passion so great, so deep, so strong. But instead of finding another thick plastic crate protecting and preserving the glass shells there was only a cardboard box with the fourth wall cut out. I watched as he analyzed the three-sided box, created a plan of action, placed his arms clumsily around its unsecured frame and began to walk.

But within the first steps he realized his plan was ill-conceived as the bottles began to shake against one another and tip toward the open wall of the box. As if time slowed down he began to throw his legs beneath the cascading bottles and twist his frame beneath the cardboard bundle. He lay there, legs twisted up under the box painful looking as if they were broken. The bartender came out and began to berate the drunk, but I sat there marveling that not a single one of the bottles was broken!

In that moment the words that came to my lips were these: A man will sacrifice himself for the thing he loves. Quietly I watched as the man lifted his disjointed frame from the ground, and I had to ask myself, “Do I love Jesus as much as that drunk man loves beer?”

What are we willing to sacrifice? What are we carrying that is only a shadow of what God has for us? Because unlike the hollow promise of the bottle that can only leave us with an empty bitter-mouth, Jesus brings us the wine of His presence, which He makes fuller, sweeter, richer. What are we willing to sacrifice today for the deeper presence of Jesus in our lives and the lives of the unreached, with a love like beer?

from the heart of a warrior child

Child soldiers. For many people their mental image of Africa is lost-eyed boys, dressed in rags and strapped with automatic weapons. These nameless boys pass from birth to death unnoticed by the wider world as they scar the face of our continent. How do we even begin to respond?

This month our night guard Ibrahima* came up to me, weak-voiced and sunken eyed. As we stood together in the soft glow of a single lightbulb above our door he shared with me that his nephew had passed away. Living in Senegal the plight of child soldiers is not a reality we struggle with, but infant mortality still is. We stood there somber and broken at the loss of life. In shock. A child, made in the image of God. A child whose small chest no longer shrinks and grows with breath.

Our guard made his preparations to return to his village and mourn with his sister grieving the loss of her son, weep with his family at the loss of their child. Before I got up early the next morning the day guard had arrived and Ibrahima was gone. In my shock I’d missed my chance to pray with him.

The next evening came and we were introduced to our replacement guard. I went back inside and still felt the grief weighing on my chest. As the night fell our doorbell rang. I looked outside to find our regular guard standing by our kitchen window. I thought he had already left for the village, but there he stood. As I came out the door he folded his arms around me. He came to let me know he was going. This time I wouldn’t miss the moment, my second chance. I prayed over him, for his travel. I prayed for his family with him folded in my arm. We stood together as I sought to love him in love of Jesus.

As I walked back inside my heart and mind were suddenly flooded with the names and faces of boys from Trinity AG in Lanham, Maryland. This may seem an odd jump but those boys are part of a Royal Rangers troop who have chosen to pray faithfully this past year for Ibrahima. He was never far from their hearts and this evening was a fulfillment of another step toward the throne of God. Some day I pray Ibrahima will accept Jesus as his savior believing one day he will stand before the Jesus surrounded by these young men, with the hearts of warriors, who have made intercession for his soul.

It is time we transform the image of the child soldier. Not an African child abused of life and love, but young men from around the world burdened with the children of Africa to be dressed in the robes of glory, embraced in the Life and Love of Jesus. It’s time we sent our children into the battlefields of prayer for the dying before the day is gone.

entering the upper room

In the heart of Parcelles, one of the largest neighborhoods of the Northern shore of Dakar, sits a five story hotel. Bright yellow paint is slowly chipping at the edges while one palm tree rises out of the sand to welcome you in. The hotel sits across the street from a bustling market. People shuttling back and forth below this gold-and-glass inn as buses and horse carts roll up and down in front. This hotel is our church’s temporary home.

Walking through the dark lobby, tiled and poorly lit, leads to an unmarked door at the back. Light spills through the open door where the sun greets you again outside at the base of tilting and twisting staircases. Descending to the left the step tiles giving way to cracking concrete and soft green of moisture in the edges. In front are the stairs that lead to the first group of rooms and the next set of stairs. Ascending the labyrinth of stairs, one two three flights of weaving, from shade to light, opens up to clear sky and one more twist—over the stair-bridge—and into the upper room.

The season and the altitude produce a sweet cool breeze from the large bay windows that line the off white walls and dark purple pillars. The upper room. Our upper room. From our height we can see in every direction. The concrete jungle fades across the horizon and disappears in the smoggy haze of the metropolis. Markets. Apartments. Minarets. We can see everything from this upper room. Our upper room.

Each Sunday morning more and more people are making the climb to the top floor, to the upper room, our upper room. We are renting the space for three hours and we use every minute of it. Chairs set up, chairs prayed over. Floors swept, floors paced in prayer. The gathering grows and we enter into our united prayer. The seats fill in and we begin to worship. What an incredible sound to hear! The voices of men, women and children singing the greatness of our God, the goodness of our Christ, at the roof of our city. Our words of worship echo across the room and the Holy Spirit moves in our upper room.

Each Sunday our theme for this year becomes more and more real: Experiencing the Presence of God Among the Nations. They are no longer merely words on a page that I wrote in December. They are the influencing DNA of our missionary church, a missionary fellowship of Africans gathered together in the upper room. In these days after Easter looking toward Pentecost we are living the book of Acts!

How could we have anything less than deep, rich expectancy at what God is going to do?! Thank you for climbing those stairs with us. Thank you for lifting us up in prayer and dreaming with us of unreached peoples reached with the Gospel! Thank you for waiting with joyous expectancy at what the Lord has done, is doing, and will do in the days and years to come!

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.