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?

Our best kingdom work

 "Jesus will build his church... but it's also frustrating to be so limited."

That was my message to a friend the other day. Life here continues but it is hemmed in by necessary coronavirus precautions. 

As a family, we have less than a year remaining to live full-time in our city, due to visas. Yet (in part because of those self-same visas) this period also provides my husband and I with greater time, flexibility and freedom to serve the local church here. We thought we might have had to leave sooner; we didn't anticipate getting this extra time here. And we're carrying mental lists of good, useful things we could be doing in these bonus months. Meeting up with people interested in the Gospel. Preparing food for everyone to eat together after a church service. Visiting isolated believers in other cities. Sharing dinner, conversation and life with church family. Getting on with baptism lessons with a brand new believer. 

These lists and plans involve a lot of doing. And as Christians, we are meant to be doing. We're to be doers of the word, devoting ourselves to doing what is good (James 1:22; Titus 3:14). We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works (Ephesians 2:10).

But right now we can't get on with most of the things on our lists. And the things we can do are often having to be done in a less-than-ideal way. 

I've been praying recently, "Lord, I don't know how but use coronavirus for your glory. Use us here for your glory." When I'm being honest though, I recognise that beneath my prayer there's an undercurrent that says, "Why God? You seem to have shut the door on us remaining here long-term but you've given us these additional months to stay. Aren't we meant to be stewarding them well, working through the Spirit's power for the growth of your church here? Aren't we meant to be doing more than we can right now?". 

I don't think it's wrong to humbly ask God why. However there's a temptation interwoven into my questions and prayers, to believe that my plan, full of things to do, would be better than God's plan. But what if God's plan is also full of things for me to do, but my idea of what I should be focusing on this year is different from God's idea of what I should be doing?

In his book, 'The Disciple-Making Parent', Chap Bettis quotes Paul Miller as saying "It didn't take me long to realize that I did my best parenting by prayer. I began to speak less to the kids and more to God." Bettis goes on to ask "Might you do your best parenting by prayer?"

Prayer as our best parenting doesn't mean that the other aspects of parenting are unimportant. As parents, we still have to love and teach our children. We still have to do the repetitive  tasks of parenting - feeding, clothing, clearing up messes. We nurture them as we listen, encourage, discipline, read, explore and play. We actively point them to Jesus as we teach them, pray with them, bring them to church and weave the gospel into our everyday lives. But prayer as our best parenting recognises that we cannot change our children's hearts. It shows that we cannot parent by our own strength but must go about our parenting consciously relying on God's power. It might not change the core of what we do, but it will most definitely change how we do it.

Might I do my best kingdom work by prayer? Might I have no other choice but to do my best kingdom work this year by prayer? Could it be that this year I will talk less with my brothers and sisters in Christ, more to God and be more effective in ministry?

I dare not make presumptions as to what the Almighty God can and will achieve through coronavirus. I do not know how he will use these strange times for his glory. But I wonder if God is using the limitations of my circumstances to bring me to my knees in prayer.

When what we can do seems so inadequate, the delusion that we can change people falls away. When our ability to 'do' is reduced, we expose the lie that our efforts are sufficient to build Christ's church. When we are constrained and limited, we uncover the truth that was there all along: we are meant to do good works but we're meant to do them with a prayerful dependence on God. 

Prayer as our best kingdom work doesn't mean that our other work here is useless or insignificant. Less time to spend with church family doesn't mean that we won't talk to them at all. We'll still be taking all the opportunities that we reasonably can to help build up the body of Christ here. At the same time, we're acknowledging that maybe this year, God is going to visibly show us that we'll do our best discipling, encouraging, teaching by prayer.

2000 years on, history repeats itself

 Imagine the scene. You're walking down the streets of Ephesus one day in the 1st century AD. You see a group of people gathered in the street. The group is growing larger by the minute. They're muttering and talking to each other, some are shaking their heads and others look surprised. You can't quite work out what all the fuss is about but as you approach you see smoke rising from the centre of the group.

Getting closer, you see what is happening. There are some Followers of the Way, the people who claim a crucified man from a backwater of the Roman empire came back to life and worship him as God, in the middle, standing next to a fire. The fire is being fuelled by - no it can't be - scrolls, of all things. Valuable scrolls! The whispered incredulity of the onlookers is clearly audible.

"They're crazy! Do they know how much those are worth?"

"That's a fortune going up in flames! Couldn't they have sold them at least?"

"Do they have to make such a public spectacle of themselves?"

Fast forward 2000 years and there's no need to imagine the scene. Another group of onlookers have gathered on a packed beach, only a few miles away from the ruins of Ephesus. It's not fire that's drawn them this time but water. Next to the families sitting on the sand, a small collection of people are watching three people wade out into the sea, one by one. They stop when the water reaches to their waists. Two others are already in the sea waiting for them. And each of the three stands in the sea and declares that they follow that same crucified, resurrected man-God. Such a public display is only possible in a few places in this country - attempting the same thing elsewhere is too risky. 

I'm a visitor accustomed to life in a much more conservative city and am delighted to be able to witness this but also feel uncomfortable and exposed in such a public setting. But as I stand on the hot sand, I can see and hear those wandering past, who stop and stare at this strange sight.

These onlookers, like their predecessors centuries before likely did, watch with surprise and provide their own commentary to others joining them.

"They're Turks getting baptised."

"Muslims becoming Christians."

The actions of the believers seem just as incomprehensible to bystanders as they must have done in early church times. 

And we pray that just like in Acts, the Word of the Lord would spread widely and in power.

Western Christian - the world is watching you

This is a joint post from my husband and I.

We know that these are strange and difficult times right now. We've prayed for wisdom for church leaders globally as they seek the best solution to the principles of rightly wanting to meet together, loving each other, loving neighbours, protecting individual freedoms and obeying governments. We've prayed for grace and unity in churches.

But when Western churches and believers balance all of these up, there is another factor to consider too. You may not be aware but your actions are visible to the rest of the world. Your choices can have consequences for your brothers and sisters in countries around the world where it is much more difficult to be a Christian.

In Turkey, our media is very often filled with stories of disasters, scandals and problems of every kind that are happening across the world, especially in more Western and richer countries. (You can speculate about why that might be the case, but it is). This also combines with a nationalism that is tied up with an Muslim identity. For some people, this manifests as an anti-Christian identity.

So, surprising as it may seem, the actions of churches in countries such as the USA, UK, Canada, Europe and elsewhere can actually be newsworthy here, even more so if it involves civil disobedience or results in a COVID-19 outbreak. 

As Christians we follow the Lord Jesus, first and foremost. It is also clear from the Bible that it matters what outsiders think. We want to honour Christ's name and create opportunities to share the Gospel. Western churches have cultural capital to draw on, the result of decades and centuries as generally being seen as a force for good in society. The situation in many other countries is rather different. 

One American church has started meeting in defiance of local government edicts. The reaction from the congregation was cheers and applause. If the believers here were similarly to come to the conclusion that, having exhausted other options, publicly defying government regulations was the only path of faithfulness that remained, the atmosphere would be better described as 'fear and trembling' rather than celebratory. If for some reason this intention was announced to the state beforehand, the meeting would be characterized by solemn joy, knowing that it would be our last. In addition to the inevitable church closure, believers would be shunned in society and risk dismissal from work. Some of the younger believers would likely be banned from meeting with any other believers. Preconceptions of Christians would be reinforced and it would be harder to share the Gospel.

This is no exaggeration. 350,000 people and the country's top political leaders came to the first Friday prayers following the conversion of the historic Hagia Sophia (originally a church building) back into a mosque a few weeks ago. It's not difficult to imagine how people here might feel about living churches. And there are many countries where believers face much more serious opposition. 

When ideas circulate that Christians are agents of the West and plotting the downfall of Middle Eastern countries, believers in those countries must work hard to show that while they may be Christians, they still love their country and want the best for it. The concept of a Christian as a moral, good person is (mainly thanks to Hollywood and 11th-13th century history) not widespread at all. So Christians here know that our reputation with outsiders matters for the Gospel and seek to do good, so silencing ignorant talk (1 Pet 2:15). 

And the actions of Western churches reflect on Christians and churches here. 

Local believers are taking tiny steps forward in dismantling those deeply ingrained prejudices, but years of work can be undone in moments. Negative stereotypes of Christians can be reinforced so easily by a news report of a Western church.

Christian brothers and sisters in the West, please know that your choices have consequences for how the name of Christ is viewed in other countries. Please be aware of the position of influence — for good or bad — that you enjoy. When you consider your rights and freedoms to meet together, do not forget the rights and freedoms of your brothers and sisters in Christ across the world. They may bear the greater cost of your actions.