Changing our model of ministry

 A few months ago, we relocated from Turkey back to the UK. We will be continuing to work alongside a local church in Turkey, but it will be through a model of in-person visits and remote work (i.e. Zoom). The plan is that going forward, and once COVID restrictions have eased, we will make one long annual visit to the city we used to live in as a family and my husband will make more regular shorter trips. We’ll do work such as discipleship lessons via video chat while in the UK and in-person when we visit.

Why are we doing this? Living in one country and visiting another for ministry purposes is, in many ways, not ideal. Wouldn’t it be better to accept that God has closed this door for us and move on?

Here’s a few reasons why:

Our local pastor asked us to

When we, in conjunction with our local Turkish church pastor, our sending church and our organisation, came to the reluctant conclusion that there was no good way for us to stay in our city long term, our local pastor pointed out that relatively speaking, the UK is not so far away from Turkey. He asked us if we’d relocate to the UK and come back and visit for ministry purposes. Cross-cultural workers foisting their own ideas onto a situation where there is already a local, Bible-believing church with its own leadership with no regard for the church or leadership is not respectful or helpful. But the flip side is that when our local church pastor asks us to do something, we need to think seriously about it.

It is possible

In some ways, it’s not possible to know how realistic something is until you try it. But we’ve talked with our sending church and organisation and we all think it can work. The time difference isn’t too big, plane tickets aren’t too expensive, visas are not required and we speak the language. My husband will be making many of the visits by himself (once travel restrictions ease up) and we think our location and situation will allow us to manage that strain and impact on our family. Home educating our children makes a longer annual visit as a family possible.

It will (hopefully) be useful

Ironically, we will actually have more time to spend with our local Turkish church as visitors than we did living in that city, with my husband working nearly full-time to get a work permit for us to be able to live there. With non-Christians regularly getting in touch or turning up to the church building because they want to investigate Christianity, start reading the Bible or even become a Christian and start baptism lessons, there is plenty that can be done on visits and some of it can be continued via calls/video chat from the UK.

Our local church is the only Turkish church in the city of 1.5 million but more than that, there are no churches in the neighbouring cities 2-3 hours drive away. The church doesn’t currently have much manpower to visit isolated (mostly male) believers in those cities but the hope is that my husband will be able to visit some of those men in person when he’s in the country and be in contact via calls/video chat when he’s in the UK.

And the critical factor in this is that we already have the relationships with the church, having lived there for three years. In the Turkish culture, relationships are absolutely crucial and they take time. We know the church and they know us. Our pastor trusts us. We can visit and encourage church members and provide pastoral support as necessary.

Why not?

It is the Lord’s harvest and at the same time it is our privilege as God’s children to be involved in the great task of taking the Gospel to the nations. There are countries which, after a period of openness, are getting harder to get into again. It’s not a ‘traditional’ model of cross-cultural work, but new challenges of access and new opportunities through technology demand different solutions. There’s a little church in a big city with a faithful pastor in a country that desperately needs the Gospel and they’ve asked us to come and help in this way. Why wouldn’t we try and say yes to them?

Come

In a couple of months we will relocate back to the UK and continue ministry here through visits and working remotely. We will have completed five years of overseas service. So few years compared to the years we had hoped and planned to spend living here and yet deeply significant years. It's no exaggeration to say that we're not the people we were when we came.

As I've been reflecting on our time here, I've wondered what I would have said to myself five, six, seven years ago when we were thinking and talking and dreaming and praying about serving God overseas. And what would I say to someone in a similar position now?

This is what I would say:

Come.

Come, even though it will be harder and more humbling than you could ever imagine. Come, knowing that there will be days that you feel so lonely, so worn out, so inadequate. You will cry, you will wonder how you will keep going, you will feel homesick, you will miss family and friends. You will try your hardest to fit into a culture where you'll always stand out as the foreigner and then find that you've left a piece of yourself here so that you don't fit so easily into your passport culture any more.

Come, and you will change. You'll be thrown so far out of your depth that you can do nothing but cling to Christ. You'll find that when you feel lonely and misunderstood by those around you and those back in your passport country, you can spill out your words to Jesus and he will truly understand you. You'll trust in God's sovereignty like you never have before because you see the reality of how not-in-control you are of your life. You'll find you are weaker than you ever supposed but Christ is stronger than you ever imagined.

Come, and you'll make friends with people from other cultures, eat new foods, learn a new language, explore a new country and rejoice in the diversity of God's creation. Come, and learn a little more about what it means to have citizenship in heaven and to long for our true home.

Come, one sent by and with the support of your church 'back home', because the church is the bride of Christ and God's means of advancing his kingdom on earth. And because you are going to need the support of your church family. Come, listening to the advice both of older believers who know you well and of those who've been out on the field a long time, because you know less than you think you do and there are so many things that you don't know that you don't know. Come, in partnership with the local church and believers where you'll be serving. There's nothing worse than foreigners who turn up and think that they know better than mature, respected local pastors.

Come, because although it might feel safer to stay home, you are safe with God. Come, even though you will see how deeply rooted the tendrils of pride and self-dependence are rooted in you. Come, knowing you are weak and not up to it, because God delights in using weak people and his grace is sufficient.

Come, because there are millions of people here who have never truly heard and understood the Gospel and the consequences are eternal. Come and know that results are not guaranteed because it is God who saves. But you may see lives changed and people saved and God might even use you - yes, you - as a means of accomplishing his work.

Come, even though people will disappoint you and hurt you and oppose you and you will invest so much only to see people walk away, because Jesus will look even more beautiful then.

Come, because the work is not yet done and the harvest field is ripe. Come, because God is at work and it is our privilege to be part of it. Come, because Jesus is worth it.

Life in a goldfish bowl

"We've seen you around here. You live in that building, in that apartment don't you?" 

We're outside on the grass that sits squashed between the mosque and the back of our apartment building. I've carefully chosen this time in the afternoon so that my children are not running around pretending to be knights and sword-fighting with sticks while on of the daily prayer times is going on. Three women have crossed over the street to talk to me from the apartment building opposite. A young woman, her mother and a grandmother. The grandmother leans on her granddaughter's arm. 

"We've see you out on your balcony. Your children are so sweet. We've seen how your husband plays with the children too, how much you both love them," one of them continues. The grandmother had wanted to come and say hello in person. I nod and smile and say something politely back to them, mentally noting that our balcony is under observation.

Another day, we're in a park with friends. A Turkish lady I don't know is talking to my friend. My friend tells me later that I'm apparently well known enough in the area that this Turkish lady, who I've never talked before, used me and the building where I live as a landmark to explain where her shop is located. 

Before we lived in this city, I read about some European workers living in China in the 1800s. They had to get used to curious faces looking in at the window, watching what they were doing and commenting among themselves on the actions of the strange white Westerners. I thought to myself then that I was glad I didn't live in a goldfish bowl. Imagine how discomfiting it would be to feel like you are constantly on display. 

I remember living in Istanbul and consciously thinking that there were enough foreigners that we didn't stand out too much. Walking down the street, we didn't blend in with the Turks but it wasn't unusual to go to a children's play area in the part of the city we lived in and hear other people speaking English.

Now we live in central Turkey, in a tall apartment block surrounded by other tall apartment blocks. We don't live in as small a goldfish bowl as those workers in China did. There are no wondering faces pressed up against the glass here. That's one benefit of living in a second floor apartment. They're just looking out of their windows, across 10 metres and into our windows instead.

We live in a large goldfish bowl. In a city where there are very few Westerners, it's easy to stand out. With three small boys, closer in age than Turkish children often are and all with varying shades of light-coloured hair, we stand out a mile. We walk down the street and I know that people are looking at us. Some of the elderly men say maşallah, maşallah approvingly as I pass, a throwback to the old agricultural economy which prized boys. I hear murmurs of çok tatlı (they're very sweet) from others about the children. Somebody stops me outside the small supermarket to say hello because they've seen me in the park with the children before.

Some days, I love living in such a friendly and sociable community. I know that I'm challenging some of their preconceptions about how Christians (because all Westerners are considered Christians by most people here) dress and act and speak. I hope that helps break down barriers for the Gospel, or at least raises a question in their minds. Other days I long for anonymity, to not be watched and talked about and commented on.

The truth is, though, all of us live in a goldfish bowl. No matter what country we live in, our family, friends, colleagues and neighbours are watching how we live. They may not tell us that we're under observation quite as bluntly as my Turkish neighbours do. But they're taking note of us. Of whether we practise what we preach, of whether our claim to follow Christ truly impacts how we live. 

And when we close the curtains and shut the door, it is tempting to think that we've managed to gain some privacy. It's all too easy to forget, though, that the sovereign God is watching. The drawn curtains might give us some privacy from the neighbours but every part of our lives is on display to God. God - mighty, merciful and unimaginably holy - sees my every thought, my every word, my every deed. 

My family is highly visible in our community. That's just part of life here and it regularly, rightly, gives me pause for thought. But how much more should I pause to think about the whole of my life being visible before God.

2020 will not be wasted

What a year 2020 has been. It's been described by some as a 'terrible' year or even the 'worst year' globally. Although historians would no doubt point out that there are some very strong other contenders for the 'worst year', it's certainly true to say that 2020 has been a year like no other in our lifetimes. Even now the effects of coronavirus continue to reverberate around our lives and compound the 'normal' struggles of life. As we get to the end of this year, it's tempting to draw a line under it and try to move on. 

I'm not tempted to pretend that 2020 never happened but  I do feel the draw of deciding to write-off 2020, like a bad investment or broken asset. I could just admit that 2020 was pretty terrible, try not to dwell on it too much and get on with 2021. There is still six weeks to go of 2020 but it's tempting just to try and get on with 2021 right now. I can't change the calendar and make 2021 come any faster, but I can at least get on with planning 2021.

Yet one idea keeps circling around my head.

2020 will not be wasted.

My friend and mentor when I was at university was the first person who repeated this idea to me, over and over again, until the words had sunk into my brain, although it certainly wasn't original to her and she didn't claim that it was. God does not waste experiences, she said, as I processed some difficult things that had happened. And over the last ten years, it's a thought that has stuck with me.

God does not waste experiences. 

"In all things, God works for the good of those who love him" (Romans 8:28). Or, to rephrase, God has worked, and is working, for the good of his children in every part of their lives. There is no part of our lives that is redundant in the long, slow process of God conforming us to the image of his Son. There is no situation that God cannot and does not use. 

If we could see our lives from a bird's eye view, there would be no section that we could trim a little bit off for a more streamlined sanctification. If we could see how God is weaving and pulling together the strands of our days and weeks and months, there would not be one useless thread to pick out.

This goes against our normal thinking. We look at events in our lives and we cannot comprehend how God could pull anything out of value out of them. I've looked at the mismatch between my hopes for 2020 and the reality; from a human perspective, I'm at a loss to figure out how much of this year could be anything but a waste. 

But 2020 will not be wasted because God does not waste experiences. If you have been united to Christ, then there is not one moment of 2020 that you can describe as worthless. The mundane, the disappointing, the hard, the boring, the encouraging, the heartbreaking - God won't squander a second of it. We may not know what good God will bring from 2020 but we can trust our heavenly Father to use it for his glory and to make us more like Christ. 

Of all the adjectives that we could use to describe 2020, it has not been a waste of a year.

How to shock a deacon (and other things you might not be aware of)

We were just starting to raise support ahead of moving abroad and had, with the help and advice of our sending organisation, put together a provisional budget. We felt it was realistic and certainly well within the bounds of what we'd been told to expect by our organisation. The elders and deacons of our sending church had come over that evening to talk through our financial needs. I made everyone a cup of tea and pulled out a box of homemade cookies. My husband handed out copies of the draft budget. As everyone started to digest the contents of the sheet, one of the deacons skipped straight to the bottom of the page. As his eyes alighted on the total figure at the bottom, he almost fell off his chair in shock and surprise. 

It wasn't the most auspicious start to gathering financial support, even if it does make for an amusing story now. Yet by God's grace, we have been and continue to be well supported financially in our work here. But in Western cultures (or, at least, British culture), where we often try as best we can to skirt around the subject of money, financial support for cross-cultural workers never seems like an easy topic to talk about. 

A couple of weeks back we had another worker family come and spend a few days with us. They're good friends in a similar life position to us and we talked openly and honestly about a whole number of things, including issues surrounding financial support for workers.

The details of these conversations aren't pertinent and I don't want to expound on them here but I want to flag them as questions that we pondered and discussed. No issue has a clear right or wrong answer but comes down to how to apply wisdom depending on the person and situation. 

• Different support models: salary; raising support according to a budget; partial self-support
• Saving and investing for retirement, particularly coming from a culture where there is the expectation that individuals fund their own retirement in one way or another.
• Whether and how much to save for our children's futures, so as to be able to contribute in some way towards young adult expenses such as driving lessons, weddings and university education.
• The pressure to make sure that holidays don't look too luxurious, including avoiding or limiting photos on social media.
• Consciousness of how spending decisions 'look' to supporters back home, for example getting paid cleaning help in the home.
• Feeling the need to justify certain decisions, for instance how what might have looked like an extravagant holiday was actually a thrifty option.
• Balancing the cost of different education options (private schools, national schools, home education) for children with other factors.
• The interaction and balance between 'secular' work (where that is required in order to get a work visa to stay in the country), 'ministry' work, the salary for that secular work and additional financial support from ministry partners. 
• Whether and how much to explain to supporters about the particular pressures that come about from living and serving in a cross-cultural context and how that impacts spending decisions.

And there are many more related questions that we didn't cover. These considerations are not all unique to cross-cultural workers but they do take on a particular significance when you rely on financial support from churches and individuals to live and work. Some of them weren't questions that we'd necessarily thought much about (or at all) before we came out on the field. 

Why am I sharing this?

Most of us instinctively shy away from financial topics. They can be uncomfortably gray areas to discuss. But they are very real issues for workers, and for others in Christian ministry. I'd like to suggest that we get a little more comfortable talking about these things but I'm not too sure if that's realistic for most of us. I'd be content to raise awareness of these issues, to say that these are things that cross-cultural workers are thinking about. We feel the responsibility to steward well the resources - not just money, but time, energy, language ability, Bible understanding and knowledge, spiritual gifts - that we've been given by God. We don't take support for granted but are truly grateful for it. We deeply desire to do the right thing when it comes to living on support - the right thing for us, for our families, for the local church that we serve and for God's glory. And we wrestle with what that right decision is. An innocent comment from a supporter about a holiday we've taken can cut deeply. We might be serving abroad but we're still sinners, a bundle of Christ-exalting intentions moderated by pride and the fear of man, and that impacts our choices too.

We are fortunate to have generous friends who urge us to remember our human frailty and to invest in looking after ourselves so we can keep serving. We're grateful for our partner churches' and individuals' support, for our sending organisation and for older, wiser cross-cultural worker friends, who have helped and advised us on some of these areas. We also know others who've struggled with one or more of these areas.

I don't make that cookie recipe much any more, but whenever I do I think of that evening with the elders and deacons. We had a good conversation that evening and I think everyone went away a little better informed of some of the financial considerations and factors involved in being a worker overseas. 

Let's talk and think and learn more about financial considerations for cross-cultural workers. 

Rainy days

It was rainy yesterday. The drizzle all day kind of rain, clouds so low they obscure the top half of the mountain that we can see from our window. The summer months are dry here and though we get a little rain during summer, the rain and snow is mostly concentrated between November and April. I can't remember another all day, rainy day like yesterday in the previous five months. When we've driven out of the city in the last few months, the land has been dry and scorched from the summer heat, with a slash of green across the landscape every now and then, as trees mark out the path of a river.

I used to think of rain as a negative thing. I knew in my head that plants need rain to grow but from my wet British perspective, I thought that a little more sun and a bit less rain wouldn't be a bad thing. It's a thought echoed in popular culture: don't rain on my parade, why does it always rain on me, here comes the rain again...

Now I live in a much drier country, I have a whole new perspective on rain. Nowadays farmers can very easily irrigate crops that aren't next to a river but the watered green fields next to yellow barren ground provide a stark reminder of just how necessary and life-giving rain is. 

Living here has helped me read many Bible verses with a fresh perspective, including the ones about rain. There's too much to say on the theological significance of rain in the Bible for one blog post but rain is a recurring theme in the Bible. So this is a skim along the surface, a few quick thoughts that have been circulating around my head about the Lord who is the master of the water cycle, the one who covers the sky with clouds and commands the rain to fall (Psalm 147:8).

When the Almighty God declares that his thoughts are not our thoughts, that his plans and purposes are more drenched in compassion than we could ever imagine, that his love is as great as the heavens are high above the earth, he uses rain and snow as a picture to illustrate his point. Just as rain and snow fall from the clouds and cannot return to the sky without running through the ground and watering the soil, enabling plants to grow, so God's merciful drawing of his people to him cannot be thwarted (Isaiah 55:6-11).

The Lord is our shepherd who makes me lie down in green pastures and leads me beside quiet waters (Psalm 23:1-2). I've seen sheep here making do with the scraggly, brown grass. They look scraggly and thin themselves, not much like the fluffy sheep we're used to in the UK. But the Lord doesn't tell us to make do with the unappealing brown grass. He shows his care for us as he refreshes us with the choicest pastures and safest waters.

God "causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matt 5:45) Jesus isn't saying here that sun = good, rain = bad so just as God sends good things to all people, bad things happen to all people too. Far from it! He's underlining our Father in heaven's merciful character by repeating his point in two different ways. Both the sun and the rain are evidence of God's common grace. 

And waiting for rain gives us a picture of our lives right now. James gives us the example of a farmer patiently waiting for the seasonal rains, depending on the rain to water the waiting seeds and cause the crops to grow, as an encouragement to wait patiently for the Lord's return.

What exactly is it that we're meant to see in that patient farmer, looking day after day up at the sky for clouds to gather? James is not saying that a farmer hopes the rains will come but there's always the chance of a drought this year. He's using the year by year, decade by decade, century by century regularity of the seasons to make his point. 

We can miss this too easily from a British context because rain is a reliable part of life all year round. Summer just hopefully means a little less rain! But both here and in Israel, there is a seasonal pattern to rain. The rain generally comes in the cooler months while in summer we can go for weeks without rain.

James explains the analogy when he writes that believers are to "be patient and stand firm, because the Lord's coming is near." (James 5:8) When the farmer has planted his seed and prepared the field, he can do no more. He needs that rain. Without rain, his crops will not grow and he will have no harvest, no food and no money. He cannot make it rain. But he trusts that the rain is coming, as it does every year. In the same way, we wait for the Lord's coming. We confidently live our lives with a firm and solid hope that Christ is coming again.

It's rained again here today, though not as much as yesterday and my children are asking to go out in the rain. As we stomp in puddles, I'll be reminding them that rain is a sign of God's mercy. That God is our caring shepherd. That God is our kind Father and every good thing that every person has comes from him. And that as sure as the seasons turn, Christ is coming again.

Asking locals to be self-supporting - where possible

I really appreciated this article asking whether it is hypocrisy to ask locals to be self-supporting. The author makes some excellent points and is completely right to say, "dependency upon Western dollars is a major problem, undercutting the emergence of healthy churches in many places overseas and stunting local believers in their growth."

He is spot on in identifying that local aspiring leaders can sometimes be found on the look out for Western patrons and that when there is a weak (or non-existent) culture of giving among local believers, it becomes self-perpetuating. 

The author says, "Foreign financial support, if attempted, must be done very carefully and wisely, always with an explicit vision toward self-supporting local churches." Agreed. Self-supporting local churches are the best way forward. He goes on to say, though, that while proven, mature workers are worthy of their wages but that their salary should either be locally-raised or part of a plan where it decreases over time, similar to church plants in the West. If Western money is to be invested, training local leaders to either start a business or find work can be a better use of resources.

Foreign financial support must be done with thought and care and with an aim of moving towards self-support. But I'd add one more important part.

Self-supporting local churches are the best way forward - where this is possible. 

I know that there are some Western churches whose demographics make it nigh on impossible for them to become self-supporting. Stephen Kneale has written about how their church situation in northern England means that they need long term external partners. He lists four reasons why that is the case for them: who they're reaching; transient population; great physical need; and nobody else is there.

If I hope and expect that most churches and church plants in Western countries would become self-supporting at some point but understand that there are situations where that might not be the case, I should accept that similar situations may arise in other countries too. 

Looking at the Bible, there is clearly a principle of teaching and encouraging sacrificial giving. But, as with many Biblical commands, we have freedom to use Spirit-given wisdom to determine how exactly to apply that. 

While acknowledging that self-supporting local churches is the ideal, can we find room for an understanding that some churches in every country will need financial support from long term external partners? The key here has to be that they should be long term and partners. I'm not advocating pulling out the cheque book to give whatever is requested, no questions asked. Neither should money flow in with strict strings attached, where the givers decide how the money they give should be spent. 

It should be a relationship, a true partnership in the Gospel where there is healthy sharing and accountability. 

Let's imagine a situation. (You can decide how rooted in reality it may or may not be!). A local pastor is not locally supported. And looking around at his church, even if everyone was giving sacrificially, that would still not be enough. Every single one of the reasons Stephen Kneale lists in his article linked above would apply to that local fellowship. It's not primarily comprised of refugees and asylum seekers, but there are certainly some. Others do not have well-paying jobs or are students. The church membership is fairly transient too - many of those who come to faith and are baptised end up moving to other cities. This is usually for work but sometimes to gain greater freedom to be involved in church due to local family pressures. There's great physical need too. And there are no other churches in the city, or even remotely near to the city. 

Yes, this pastor could go back to secular work. But after 5.5 days of secular work a week, and with a wife and family, would it be healthy and sustainable to ask him to pastor on top of that? He already has more work as a full-time pastor than he can handle alone, particularly as there are a large number of 'seekers' in both his city and neighbouring cities who come to him and want to investigate Christianity, and not a lot of people in the church practically and theologically able to help in this. He's been doing this role for a number of years too - long enough that he'd have moved out of any gradual step-down support plan by any Western timescales.

This local pastor's church have not got everything sorted perfectly in their fellowship. Like many other churches, there is more to be done in developing a sacrificial giving culture. There is also more to be done in establishing a healthy understanding that Western churches are not just a source of money to be tapped. 

But a critical element of his external support is that it comes with in-country accountability. Twice a year, a small group of men meet with him and his wife. They are a mixture of fellow pastors from other cities and foreign workers who live and work in the country and who know him well. They have an honest conversation about what he's doing and how he's spending his time, how the church is doing, and a holistic look at how he and his family are doing. This type of on-the-ground accountability by people who know and care for him, as well as knowing the church and the culture, is a vital component of healthy, long-term external partnerships. The group act as a bridge between the external supporters and the local pastor. Working together in this way builds trust and provides reassurance that Western money is not being invested unwisely. This partnership model has worked well for a number of years and has provided this pastor with the spiritual, emotional and financial support to continue in ministry through some difficult periods. And there is Gospel fruit evident.

It's not hypocrisy to ask locals to be self-supporting. But if that's really not possible, might healthy long term partnerships be an alternative?