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.

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!