running with zebras

Have you ever heard the the thundering sounds of zebra running or seen a zeal of zebra sprinting through the savannah, flashes of white and black as they break through the underbrush?

I was asked recently to share my most “manly” story at the Ohio Valley Teen Challenge. I racked my brain for the most masculine reminiscences from my life. Every thought, whether it was spear fishing as a child, eating steak while wearing a leather jacket, even ignoring the GPS while venturing on the circuitous American road systems, none of them seemed too terribly manly.

The morning came and I still hadn’t chosen a story to tell. I sat there eating breakfast with Cornell Jordan, the pastor of Metro Assembly in Youngstown, and we began to talk about Kenya. And almost like thunder the pounding stampede of zebra took me back to the banks of Naivasha. I remember as if it were yesterday that a group of us students from our boarding school made the trek down into the valley. We ventured out into the vast savanna peppered with yellowing acacia trees. There before us was a zeal of zebra, forty strong if not more, grazing. Being young men full of energy (and lacking in impulse control) we ran at them with all our force and that’s when I heard the sound of their hooves, not just thundering against the ground but reverberating inside my chest. It felt like a sonic connection as I ran with the zebra.

They twisted and turned through the plain, careening into the massive bullrushes that surrounded the lake. We followed them into the high grass, like stepping into Narnia, not knowing what lay ahead. Our hearts were beating in our chests as we tracked the great beasts in the wild filled with bushbucks, hippos and the unknown.

After a time we cut our way back to our starting place, hoping to find the zebra once again, but they had been replaced by a herd of grazing cattle. Cows. Everyday, run of the mill, cows. We ran at them like we had at the zebra only to be violently rebuffed with stamping feet and aggressive snorting. We turned on our heels as the cows kicked up their hooves and began to chase us!

Standing there, sharing this story at the Ohio Valley Teen Challenge with men in recovery from addiction, I couldn’t help but see a connection, a resonance I could feel beating in my heart. How often we set out running with zebra only to be turned around by cattle. We were made for adventure, passionately pursuing God’s presence into this world He created only to be turned around and nearly trampled underfoot by the sins ordinary to all people. We experience the thundering power of Christ’s redemption when we submit our lives to follow Jesus, but no sooner are we in the wilderness that we begin to stumble on our old idolatry making golden calves that glitter and glow but lead our souls to death (Exodus 32).

We were never made to roam with the herd, to aimlessly graze through this life like cattle. We were made for more. In the image of God we were made to passionately pursue God’s best for our lives and the lives of those around us. We were made for zeal! We were made for lives of passionate dedication growing in relationship with God and calling others to Christ.

How fitting that a group of zebra are not called a herd, or a crash like rhinos or a pod like hippos. They are called a zeal.

Today, will you take a little time to pray? To ask God to give you, your family, your church and your missionaries a more complete knowledge of God’s will, spiritual wisdom and understanding? Will you pray that as followers of Jesus that the way we live will always honor and please the Lord, producing every kind of good fruit; all the while, growing more and more as we know God better and better (Colossians 1.9-10)?

Pray that as His people we would not be sidelined by cows but that we would run with the zeal of zebra, feeling the thunder of our Christ-centered fellowship deep within our souls.

stone lions in an ancient city

Unknown craftsmen shaped each brick, each one formed with a different raised relief as the clay formed and hardened in the heat of fire. Then they glazed each one with vibrant colors and sent them into the fire again. Those twice baked bricks would be joined together in the palaces of ancient Babylon and Persia. 2500 years later Elise and I walked along side those massive relocated walls where they stand today in Paris.

I imagine walking through the great citadel of Susa in the high walls of Darius’ grand palace where Esther saw the bright and breathtaking sculpted masonry of warriors, mythic beasts and lions. Esther, the young girl seemingly out of place and time, stood beneath the open mouth of that same snarling lion unable to reconcile her world and her responsibilities. Serendipitously chosen to be King Xerxes’ bride, the daughter of an exiled people now stood as queen in the center of a global superpower that spanned the globe from India to Ethiopia (Esther 1.1; 2.17).

Susa was the administrative capital of the Persian Empire. People groups from across the kingdom lined the streets and filled the homes of that ancient global city. Each artist from India, every bricklayer from Africa and exile from Israel together made up the everyday reality of Susa.

All great cities are alike in this way. New York, Johannesburg, Paris and Dakar are all living cities dynamic with color, clashing with cultures, bursting and fusing; faces of every shade all designed by the same Divine hand, woven together in the city.

Each person on their own, each brick seen in isolation, would appear out of place, but seen as a whole, the great wall relief seen in its entirety becomes awe-inspiring. At first glance, Esther in the palace seemed out of place and time. Her place was on the streets below the palace in the sea of ordinary humanity. If only one could go back in time to the height of Solomon’s reign and a royal wedding of a royal daughter like Esther would have been a natural sight. Stand too close and Esther looks like a brick mislaid, a piece misplaced, on the frieze of God’s eternal plan.

How often do we fail to see what God is doing in our lives? The coincidences and circumstances blind us like a person standing too close to a majestic piece of art. Living in global cities can produce this feeling in us all. How can one person affect the whole? How can one person influence a nation? Ironically, the living city can leave a soul feeling empty and discarded, sightless and alone, an Esther in a palace.

There is a danger that in response to the damage of the city people will abandon it, retreating from her walls to the safety of the fields. We all need those times of rest, those times of retreat that help us see the stars covered by clouds, to look across the distance and see the skyline God created. For our family this season in the United States is a wonderful “drive in the country,” a chance to step back from the frenetic and beautiful calling to the urban unreached in Dakar. This time is like the paraphrased words of Mordecai, “Who knows if perhaps you were made for such a time as this?” (Esther 4.14). At the right distance, with fresh air in our lungs, the vision of what God is creating comes back into view and our zeal for His calling surges with new life.

Sometimes I know we can feel like those twice baked bricks that decorated the walls of Persian palaces. Burning trials and the heat of tribulation may scour our souls, but when the clay is solid, the glaze is strong and the brick is set and the generations to come will look back on our faith, as we look back on the faith of Esther, and say, “If I must die, I die; but I must go.” (Esther 4.16)

As we go into the global cities with His glorious salvation, into the highways and the hedges with His eternal proclamation, to every nation, language and people group another illustrative brick is set on the wall revealing Jesus the Lamb of God and Lion of Judah in His everlasting beauty before all creation (Revelation 5).

touchstones in the temple

I stood there, a massive hewn rock adorned with a woven cross, where a world-shaping building once stood in 1810. A church once remembered as “the Antioch of the Western Hemisphere” where men and women, like Adoniram and Ann Judson, were sent out with the gospel into the nations.

I stood there staring at this monolith, this chiseled stone, a short walk away from Northpoint Bible College in Haverhill, Massachusetts where I was readying myself to speak to a new generation of men and women preparing for ministry today. The proximity was not lost on me. Near this rock Adoniram Judson, a hero of mine, had walked and talked. He shared his passion for Jesus and his calling to reach the unreached. Young, headstrong and adventurous, Judson planted himself firmly in his calling and set his life like a flint against the countless challenges he would face over his life in missions (Isaiah 50.7).

I wonder if that 22 year-old Judson could have even begun to know the suffering he would endure, the trials he would face, the struggles he would fight through in obedience to his calling. Adoniram and Ann would endure the testing of their souls as they pursued Christ’s presence among the lost. They stood as their children died of disease. They knelt as Adoniram was imprisoned during a time of bloody war. And after Adonriam was released from prison he laid by her grave when Ann’s young body failed.

Every blow, every crippling defeat was like a touchstone scouring their souls. Every trial was a new invitation to go home, to give up, to retreat. The touchstones of trial and tribulation are often constant companions to missionaries in distant lands. They endure the scraping of troubles as they cement themselves, living stones, set in far off places.

Too often we collapse at the grating feeling of those touchstones in our lives of suffering and trial. The pain is too great and we cry out for mercy while the greater gift of rejoicing in our suffering, as we fill up within our flesh the full measure of Christ’s afflictions for the lost, sits within of our reach (Colossians 1.24). Can we begin to convince ourselves that the greatest suffering is not found in the temporary casing of our redeemed souls but the eternal damnations of those hopelessly lost without Christ?

More often it is the comforts of this world, even the successes we find in ministry, that are the breeding ground of failure. In our comfort there are no challenging touchstones running against our lives exposing strengths and weaknesses, no shavings revealing the gold beneath the skin.

Right now, a new generation is poised to pick up the mantle of missionary zeal once worn by the saints of old; those pioneers who ventured into the bush and emerged body-worn but souls-at-ease beside new brothers and sisters in Christ. Their wrinkles reveal the gold of their sacrifice to see men, women and children freed from spiritual bondage; their spilt blood is the seed of new churches (Romans 15.20).

In 200 hundred years from now may there be a new stone laid next to the first, a remembrance stone, a monument to those young men and women who counted the cost, settled their eyes on Jesus as they held shame and suffering in contempt, and carried the cross to be a personal link from the local church to the unreached (Hebrews 12.2).

the unreached in the unknown

As a child I loved to hear stories of great adventures, Hardy Boys braving all to discover the truth or unseen worlds of child kings and talking lions. My real world was one of transatlantic airplanes and the beautiful African rainforest where I caught fish with a spear gun and went to boarding school in the Great Rift Valley, so it wasn’t a lot for my ADHD to color the pages of my life with the adventures I heard in those stories.

When God called me to be a witness of His love to the nations I can’t remember experiencing any reticence. My life was made for high adventures! Why should that stop when I left home?

Over the years my heart to carry the gospel to unreached peoples grew. I would read about distant cities filled with men, women and children where the good news was unknown and my heart would break; seeing pictures of lost people my hands would become stained with easily shed tears.

In college, I met an incredible young woman who spoke as passionately about the lost as I did. And after wedding bells and years of ministry the two became three with number four on the way. Finally, the door to distant lands was open. The far off deserts of Northeastern Africa were open and God’s call was saying go.

Although we never faltered in stepping forward, setting our life in step with God’s call to the unreached a veil I’d never seen before appeared on the horizon. Behind the veil were a growing host of unknowns that hinted at immeasurable risk.

Was I willing to be a martyr? Yes. Was I willing to take my family where my wife and children could face martyrdom?… Those answers didn’t come so quickly. The hyperactive mind that fed my sense of adventure in childhood became a dangerous playground of terrifying thoughts.

Looking back, our years in Northeastern Africa filled our family with the most impressive tapestry woven of great and painful memories. Today, we rejoice remembering as we celebrated Christ with new brothers and sisters and endured persecution in a deeper way than ever before. Without a doubt, we were meant to be there, to laugh with those who laughed and mourn with those who mourned. We were called to speak people’s names and tell them the wonders of our God. We were commissioned to step out from the reached in the known to live Christ among the unreached in the unknown.

Unknown risk is the first veil that keeps followers of Jesus from reaching the unreached. It is not persecution that keeps men and women from proclaiming the gospel, but the fear of rejection and images of suffering the mind conjures up as we stare into the unknown.

We say to ourselves, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” but when the time comes to step out like Peter onto the turning waves do the unseen sea creatures of the deep keep our feet planted in the local church (Proverbs 3.5, Matthew 14.29)?

We ask ourselves what are we willing to sacrifice, but the true question, the question that God places before us is, what are we willing to gain? To our eyes the nations are shrouded in darkness where stepping out means risking more than we could imagine. Then the voice of God calls us higher and as we set out eyes above the veil we hear the heavens declare, “the whole earth is full of His glory!” (Isaiah 6.3).

In that place we are undone. Our fears and courage, our unknowns and knowns weigh around us as we recognize we have been invited into the very presence of the Lord, to be known, loved, redeemed and transformed. And falling to our knees, with contrite hearts and cleansed lips we hear God say, “Whom shall we send? Who will go for us?”

How will you answer?

the people we meet and see

The more people I meet the more I realize that all people are searching. Searching for purpose, significance, love. Searching for answers, meaning, God. They may not use those words but they are trying to make sense of their days and nights, their actions and reactions, the whole of their existence and the fracture pieces of their lives.

On a recent trip, Elise and I found ourselves in city founded eleven hundred years ago. Surrounded literally by a moat we flowed into the city like so many men, women and children who’ve gone about their lives for millennia, toiling their days away, searching for love, forgiveness and design.

Theodoric was searching for significance. Born into aristocracy he had advantage and position. But he needed more than wealth and comfort. He needed forgiveness. Theodoric was uniquely aware of his sin, his failures and downfalls. Like so many peers of his time he set his sights on pilgrimage as a way to reconcile his walk with the call of Christ.

He returned from Jerusalem with a small gift from the king, a small piece of bloodstained cloth believed to have been wiped from the face of Christ on his way to the cross. Theodoric ordered the construction of small cathedral to place the relic before returning to Jerusalem to live out his days in a monastery.

To this day, in the heart of town, built into the walls of the city hall sits Theodoric’s small basilica. We climbed the stairs to the second floor chapel and listened to the hymns, we sat in the room colored with life where thousands have come for centuries to find meaning, answers, Christ.

We watched as a little old woman, her head covered in lace, lit a candle and climbed her way to set her eyes and hope on the small encased relic. She poured out her prayer, kissing the glass repeatedly, trying to minimize the distance between her and her God. My heart wept as I watched her make every effort to draw near to God, to place her concerns and anxieties on a piece of bloodstained cloth.

Could she not see Jesus standing next to her, calling her gaze up higher? Could she not feel His Holy Spirit speaking life and love and peace into her eternity? I walked from that place in deep reverence for the privilege I have to know that my existence is not bound to intermediaries or tied to relics. My life is rooted in Christ, purchased in His blood and known by His sacrifice.

Your life has meaning. It has purpose and significance. It was created, woven together by the master of all, designer of the stars and creator of time. You have been placed with exacting purpose to make an eternal impact on those around you. There are no relics to be found, no pieces of the true cross or shrouds coated in blood, that will draw people to Christ like your life lived as a witness to His love.

In a market square a Senegalese street merchant went walking past hawking his souvenirs. As he passed me peddling his trinkets I answered him in Wolof. His eyes widened as he spun his body around to match the face with the voice. We spoke of Dakar and our neighborhood. We talked about his life and our ministry. And in the ordained randomness of this Christ-life we talked about Jesus in response to His questions.

It’s not the nameless, the blurry unknown that we are called to reach with the gospel; it’s the people we meet and see everyday. It is a life of true pilgrimage where we strike our purpose against that of others, like iron against iron. Our coworkers, classmates, lost family and friends. It is the distant woman kissing at relics drawn near into our family. It is a foreigner street vendor whose name is learned and loved.

Thank you for letting us be a personal link from the local church to unreached who are loved and known by God.

fluidity like water

I never get over how green America is! Up and down the highways, in and out of country lanes, tall forests and short shrubs a million shades of green are everywhere! This past month we made the trip from Richmond, Virginia were we’ve set up home (with beautiful trees that rise up to greet us out our third floor apartment window) to Springfield, Missouri for a gathering of world missionaries.

Getting up early one morning, still wiping sleep from my eyes, I saw countless sparkling diamonds resting on the leaves of a bush. Millions of water molecules rode in on the mists of dawn. One by one they rested on each leaf, slowly rolling toward one another, drawing to one another, forming gravity-defying drops of water, condensing into these visible early morning marvels.

Have you ever felt like a water molecule?

I know that’s a strange thing to say, but looking at those sparkling drops of water as they held to one another, I felt like one. Elise and I had rolled into that green Midwestern town and found ourselves drawing together with other men, women and children seeking God’s kingdom come to the nations, praying with one another, forming close bonds, encouraged by the presence of God in our midst.

Serving on the other side of the world among lost and unreached peoples can be challenging. There are days when seeing the literal millions of lost people across the metropolis of Dakar is overwhelming! How can one missionary, one molecule of water, transform the desert into a forest?

The words I shared with our friends at Mountaintop Church come to mind. Little is much when God is in it. The Lord that brought us across the world on the dawn will draw all men to Himself (John 12.32). One by one men, women and children will come to Christ, like Miriam, Naaman and Orpah*. One by one churches will form, as they have begun in Parcelles Assainies and Wakané-Nimzath. Drop by drop, defying the pressures of this world and the gravities of sin, they will pool together into a flowing river. One by one the seeds of God’s kingdom will break through the dusty ground into everlasting green trees  with Christ’s healing in their leaves and His beauty in the branches (Ezekiel 47.12).

Looking at those drops of water I saw the prophetic future for West Africa. In each one I saw a glimpse of God’s kingdom transforming global cities like Dakar, as He brings the cloud of His manifest presence over the horizon and rains His missionary people down into the lives of the lost and unreached. Like sparkling drops of dew reflecting the morning Sun, like sons of lights, like daughters of radiances, proclaiming the wonders of our God.

Thank you for letting us be your personal link from the local church to the unreached!

on a journey of faith

Our lives over the past few months have been defined by tape, cardboard boxes and heavy plastic. A thousand well-loved books are packed neatly away along with tables, chairs, and whatever clothes were big enough to keep. Today they’re all tightly packed like suitcase sardines, stored for our return at the end of next summer.

In between wrapping bins and breaking down furniture we were still in full time ministry;  preaching farewell messages to the many students we’ve served at the Bible school and the loving congregations of men, women and children at the churches we’ve planted. A day before we left Senegal Elise and I rejoiced as we led another young woman in committing her life to Christ.

These are all part of the journey, regular steps in the life of a missionary.

It’s hard to believe that four years ago we were packing our suitcases moving to Senegal. The speeding passage of time marked by family milestones along the way. Henry and Fiona, who waddled into Senegal, walked out as kindergarten graduates. Ava, who arrived in Dakar as a precocious four year old, left ready to start third grade.

These are all part of the journey, regular steps in the life of a child.

Daphne, who came to Africa as a two year old toddler, who now stands tall at my shoulder, a few months ago felt the Spirit of God more profoundly in her life than ever before. Kneeling at the altar, weeping in the nearness of Christ, her life verse resonated with new life and truth: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore,” (Proverbs 16.11). In those moments her confession of faith found greater clarity, her declaration of Christ’s Lordship given greater depth.

Last Sunday, days after arriving back in the States, Daphne waded into the baptismal water before family and friends. Together we listened to the words of her testimony read as she stepped down into the water; her testimony of experiencing the presence of God among the nations. In her youth, in these faded hours of her childhood, she committed to live her life for Christ, knowing Him and making Him known.

These are all part of the journey, regular steps in the life of a Christian.

This month as a family we will begin crisscrossing cities and states across America, sharing our vision to be a personal link from the local church to the unreached. We will aim to bless and challenge the Church in America with our mission to create space to grow a church planting movement in Dakar. We will live out of suitcases celebrating the hours we spend with men, women and children in countless churches.

Thank you for letting us celebrate what God is doing in your life and your local church. Thank you for letting us share the calling God has placed on our life as we serve as your personal link from the local church to the unreached!

the Bridegroom of Kedougou

If there is possibly one thing greater than the amazing cities in Africa it is their names. Africa boasts of places like Ouagadougou and Addis Ababa. Every city, every village across the great continent is dyed with vibrant sounds and meaning. These cities carry in their names rich and meaningful histories where people are drawn together. Senegal is no exception with unique and beautiful names like Tambacounda and Kedougou.

This month our family left the cool plateau of Dakar, the westernmost point of the African continent, through Fatick, Kaffrine and Bantaco, up into the eastern hill country of Kedougou. For the first time Elise and I got to see the birthplace of the Assemblies of God in Senegal. The same red soil that stained the feet of early missionaries like Talmage Butler, Peggy Lasley and Wilma Hoenes now paints ours. Like our forebears, we traveled wide distances (even sacrificing a tire on the road to Tambacounda) for relationship.

In all my journeys around the world I’ve learned that no matter how massive the language and cultural gaps may be there are core relationships between people that span the distance: brothers and sisters, fathers and sons, husbands and wives. These relationships transcend even the widest tribal lines, whether you live in Kinshasa or Kansas City. Relationships unite people.

For the past two years, Benoit Boubane and I have worked hard to establish a church-planting church in Parcelles Assanies. We’ve seen ups and downs, victories and setbacks mingled in our blood, sweat and tears. We’ve baptized new believers in the ocean and witnessed to city chiefs. We’ve watched the church grow and seen the Family Church expelled from our building, and even in the midst of that we’ve begun planting a second church in another neighborhood.

Elise and I filled our car with family and friends to celebrate with Benoit and his awaiting  bride in Kedougou. Over the past few months I learned a little Oniyan to officiate part of the marriage vows in their heart language. The multicultural choir from the Family Church had the people jumping as they sang a song they wrote. The place was packed! Mixed into the crowd full of Bassari people in their homeland were Americans, Senegalese, Nigerians, Beninoise and Togolese celebrating with them.

Why?

Because we are united by more than a city name or province. We are united by more than a nationality or color. We celebrated with Benoit and Sophie because the name of Christ transcends language and culture. It surpasses tribal scars and family traditions. We celebrated because marriage is one of the greatest symbols of God’s love for the people made in His image. It carries us from the beginning of time where God joined together Adam and Eve to the great and glorious day when Christ returns for His bride united in His name (Revelation 19.7).

Above all the great names in the world there is a name above all names exalted in the highest place, one great name: Jesus Christ (Philippians 2.9). Jesus is the bridegroom who calls from His heavenly throne to His bride made of men and women from every tribe, people and tongue (Revelation 7.9). We, who are Christians, called by His rich and meaningful name, are His bride and He embraces us in Kingston, Kiev and Kedougou.

Thank you for letting our family be a personal link from the local church to the unreached.

unfrozen in time

It looked like she was frozen in time.

Last month, flying to teach a class in Equatorial Guinea, I found myself early one morning sitting in the new Senegal national airport. Long shadows shortened as the sun came over the horizon and hints of life began to stir. The terminal, besides a few other travelers headed to unknown locations, was empty. I looked at the planes sitting in wait, the trucks and people moving near the runway. Then all of a sudden the most remarkable thing happened.

A bird swooped into view and, as it’s body came parallel with the window in front of my face, it froze. Wings extended. Eyes steeled ahead. It’s brown top feathers and soft speckled off-white belly unmoved. It was like watching a movie and at the height of the action someone pushed the pause button.

This beautiful Montagu’s Harrier was frozen in time before my eyes.

The headwind was like a brick wall. The bird hung there suspended in the air, her previous momentum keeping her from falling backward. After a few seconds of what appeared to be miraculous, the harrier began to beat her stationary wings, a fury of feathers, raising her body at least five feet. I thought to myself, what a beautiful illustration this bird had given me of overcoming!

That was until it froze again!

Despite raising its body straight up, she was still caught in the same wind tunnel, spreading her wings against the wind, her frame frozen against the opposing force. My beautiful illustration of overcoming was shattered. The bird was in the same situation just higher.

If you don’t know anything about the Montagu’s Harrier it’s an incredible bird. It is not native to Senegal. This particular bird flies long distances, has conquered the Sahara, flying from Southern Europe and Eurasia. It is a migrating bird capable of flying through all kinds of harsh conditions and climates.

And despite all this, a minuscule airport wind tunnel had conquered her. My sermon illustration was wrecked! Then the wings began to beat again, harder, faster, stronger. Her body raised another five feet and this time instead of being frozen in space her svelte shape went shooting out of sight like a bullet fired from a gun!

As followers of Jesus we have a choice when we face opposition, but too often we oversimplify the Christian life. When we face trials and tribulations, regardless of the momentum that has brought us to where we are, we freeze. We know that we “are more than conquerors” but when faced with something that must be conquered we shrink from the battle (Romans 8.37).

This past month the Family Church, the first church we planted here in Dakar, was evicted from her building. For months, the pastor and elders worked back and forth with the landlord to come to a new agreement. Yet, after all the ups and downs, after all the beating of wings, in a matter of hours the pulpit, chairs and keyboard were on the street. Moments like these can crush a people’s spirit. Just think of the desert-wandering  former slaves of Egypt who instead of looking toward the unknown and unseen Promised Land were ready to go back to their former lives of known suffering.

Like the Montagu’s Harrier you were made for more, more than an airport wind tunnel, more than a single point in history. You were made to conquer the unknown and the unseen, to ascend higher and higher still. But don’t be deceived by these simple words, there is nothing simple about them. “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Jesus told us this so that in the face of trials and tribulations, we can have peace (John 16.33).

Like the Family Church in Parcelles Assainies, if you are going through difficulties don’t be surprised, hear the voice of Jesus calling you to take heart, lift you eyes, raise your arms, refuse to be defeated or cling to the known meager past. There is a future and a hope only found in Jesus, and Jesus is calling you higher, unfrozen in time.
 

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Header Picture by Radovan Václav Used through Creative Commons

a legacy of creating space

What is your legacy? Each of us will leave a legacy, the accumulated wealth of our lives, to those who follow after us.

Early American missionaries came to West Africa steaming across the Atlantic on ships. These men, women and their families willingly lived a candlelight existence in a modern world. They carried the gospel by firelight into the bush to find the lost villages, met with chiefs and established tabernacles among them.

Missionaries like Harold and Marge Jones who took their young family deep into the heart of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso). They left modern medicine behind to reach unreached peoples. When their three year old daughter Peggy lay dying with blackwater fever they could only put their trust in the Lord to save her life. The Jones left a legacy in West Africa of creating space to grow a church planting movement.

Miraculously, Peggy recovered, and grew up dedicating her life to reaching the nations. She and her husband Bill Lasley arrived in Senegal in 1959 pioneering the work in Tambacounda. After working many long and hard days, waiting for any sign of a harvest, they cried out to God. Why had they come to Senegal only to find opposition and resistance. It was then that the Lord told them, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you,” (John 15.16). They stayed in Senegal and the Lasleys were the first missionaries with the Assemblies of God to lead Senegalese to Christ. They were the first to baptize those new believers. They were the first to perform weddings. They were the first to create space among the Serer people group and countless others.

Speaking with Peggy on the phone this month and hearing her story firsthand encouraged my heart. We are working in the space they made for us, the legacy they left for us. A common phrase we hear often is that we stand on the shoulders of giants and that is true, but it is only possible if those giants allow us to.

As we approach a new era in missions, as the world around us goes through a global culture shift, we must ask ourselves, like Bill and Peggy before us, like Harold and Marge before them, how are we changing to see the lost nations transfigured by the glory of Jesus?

I am reminded of the conquering king David resting in his palace (2 Samuel 7). Surveying the great favor God had given him over his enemies and the grand home he had been able to build. His heart became unsettled as he thought of the ark of God camping out in a tent. At the height of his success he called the prophet Nathan and told him his plans to build a temple for the Lord. Nathan was thrilled with the idea and encouraged David, but that night, as he listened to the voice of God, Nathan had to go back and deliver a different message to the king. Nathan had to go back and tell David that he would not build a house for God, instead it was God who would build a house for David, a royal dynasty, an everlasting legacy. David was a good king, but his legacy extended beyond himself and what he could accomplish by himself. The greater things were in the days to come!

David could have responded several different ways. He could have discounted Nathan’s words. He could have built a temple for God anyway. He could have dedicated himself to building up his own kingdom apart from God. David could have easily derailed his life and the legacy God had for him if he’d held on to his limited vision of the future.

Instead, David received the word of God from Nathan. He humbled himself and found a legacy sweeter and more profound than any he could have every asked or imagined. He dreamed of a Temple and the act of worship in its construction; but building the Temple wasn’t his worship to bring, but his legacy to leave for his son.

As Brandon Baldwin says, “We tend to overestimate what we can do in a year or two, and underestimate what God can do in ten or twenty.” We overestimate what we can accomplish alone and underestimate what God can accomplish through us together. The Lasleys baptized the first Senegalese believers in our fellowship, but they generously passed that legacy on to us. Bill and Peggy created space to grow a church planting movement and we share in their work. United in Christ we rejoice together!

Each of us will leave a legacy. What is yours?