Disquietude

               As I have begun to sort through the seemingly endless files of my brain containing events, thoughts, and the like from the entirety of this trip, I have begun to realize one thing: Right now, I have no idea how to begin putting things in their place. I do not mean to say that everything needs to be wrapped up with a nice bow on top- to do so would be to be incredibly dishonest with myself about the trip; some of the things that have happened just can’t be wrapped up into a nice, neat package- but I do believe that there should be a peace and quietude upon reflection once they have been fully addressed with God. For me, that time has not come. I am sure that during debrief, much of that process will begin. But I am equally sure that the process will be much longer than just a few days- a whole lifetime, perhaps. And that is completely O.K. with me, but there is a certain peace I am seeking before I leave the continent of Africa. By God’s grace, I know He will provide for me in that process what I need to be where he wants me to be when I leave in a week, though this may not be exactly what I was hoping for. Let me share with you though a few of the thoughts I am having through the process.

This morning, I preached at True Vine for the main service about some of the most blatantly unbiblical things I’ve seen in my time here. I shared the message that God revealed to me about this church concerning prayer (Matthew 6- how not to pray), the rejection of the prosperity gospel, and fighting the Spirit of Performance. During my preparation time, I was reflecting about how this message was different from previous messages I’ve preached, how often I’ve preached, and what my ministry has entailed. In Busia, we battled the Spirit of Religion; in Mbita, that of Jealousy and Greed; and here in Tororo, the Spirit of Performance. As I thought back, I realize how much I’ve preached and how much of our ministry has involved the people within the church, and it quite disappointed me. Don’t get me wrong, I love encouraging other believers, but much of that time has felt like a battle, and as I alluded to earlier, it has been a battle against these spirits that unfortunately have quite a grip even upon the Christians placed in the highest places of authority. Battling these spirits and speaking truth into these situations was not exactly how I pictured my trip. I thought I would be ministering alongside the local believers, not only to them. I thought I would be doing a lot more practical ministry and less teaching and preaching, and it’s discouraging when almost every time you stand up to speak and share Biblical truth, you see evidence within a day or two that no one heard what you had to say, or if they did, they did not listen and seek to apply it to their lives. But apparently, preaching is all “ministry” means to many Christians in East Africa. The whole process, to be honest, has made me rather disillusioned with the African Church (not that I’m that much more into the American Church), but what are we supposed to do when the people we’re to be working with are the ones who give us the hardest time and the ones who most warmly welcome us are the ordinary believers and even those outside of the church? (And why is this the case, both here in Africa and in America? That brings up another whole line of chastisement for myself and the rest of the Church today, which I will not go into at the moment.) The whole time has been exhausting, and it has certainly taken its toll on me. You become quite disillusioned when time after time you move to a new ministry sight, think that everything will improve when you join these new people only to come to find out that they have their own problems, just as egregious as the place before. I don’t know why that surprised me- we all have our struggles- but it did. By the grace of God, He has given me the strength to continue running in times like the service this morning, even when all I want to do is go to sleep. I am very glad that this is not a permanent arrangement. I know I ought to have a more kingdom-minded perspective on my time that would be more positive and be more cognizant of the honor that God chose me to go through these things because He knew I could hand them and He had big things to teach me this year. But, sometimes that perspective gets lost in the mess my time in Africa has been. That’s not to say I would change anything about it, because I do believe that God has had purpose in all things for my good, but it has not been easy.

And as I was thinking about all of these things, I realized how I continue to always assume that I am in the right in every situation that we have encountered. Sure, the confirmation coming from the Spirit and from the discernment of my team has encouraged me unto that end, but I know that I have not always been in the right. I believe that most of the time I have stood for truth by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but I know I have not been perfect unto that end for the entire five months. It’s hard to create the disconnect between passionately speaking out again the Pharisee-esque behavior displayed in so many of the people with whom we’ve come into contact and our personal actions, to maintain enough humility to recognize my faults in the midst of fighting for truth and the purity of the gospel. God has definitely given me the identity of being a warrior for speaking His truth and correcting the gross perversions of the gospel that I come into contact with (even if all I can do is speak whether or not anyone is actually listening), and that has been an awesome calling upon my life (even the African names I have been given, “Mwanzi”, “Mushindi”, and “Galoch” all mean “Conqueror” or “Victor” in Lugandan, Swahili, and Luo, respectively). But, I know I have not always done everything right. Though I have pursued to know the gospel in its purity- only what God speaks to us through His word, devoid of cultural slants, personal biases, or any other superfluous, distracting doctrine- am I being hypocritical for standing up and preaching against the cultural perspectives that blind others from another culture to the Biblically-based truth when I am still so bound by my own cultural background and perspectives? I suppose that’s one of the most challenging things about cross-cultural ministry and one of the greatest obstacles we all must individually seek to conquer. But, I didn’t write this blog to complain about what a difficult time we had or to rag on the people we were with this past five months.

As I said before, I truly desired to spend more time with people outside of the church. One of the biggest themes that I, and our team as a whole, have adopted is the idea of relational ministry. Really, this just means ministering to them the way that Jesus ministered: by forming relationships (though not with the ulterior motives of creating a “convert”), loving people with the love of Christ, modeling our lives in faithful obedience to God out of love, and challenging them to seek the Lord for themselves. We did have a few opportunities where we were able to minister relationally, and those were blessings to me. It’s amazing to see the fruit of such ministry and experience the joy that comes even just from forming those relationships upon whose basis you will be challenging individuals at a later date. It’s hard to do here in East Africa, though, because other Mzungus have taught the Africans very western ideas of ministry. Crusades, home visits, and evangecubes made unfortunate frequent visits. Now, these things in and of themselves are not bad, but the way they are administered can be horrific. I was appalled the first time I heard someone say that we could only spend five minutes at each house that we visited and that if the people were not willing to “accept salvation”, whatever that means, within those five minutes, we were to move on. I was even more appalled the first time we went to a crusade (which, by the way, is a TERRIBLE name for a ministry activity…do we study history?) and heard the preacher screaming (and I mean screaming) from a make-shift platform into a microphone in the middle of the market about the horrors of hell that faced everyone who was listening to him unless they repented now and received salvation (and then proceed to speak the next day about what a successful day it had been during house visits because of the number of people who accepted salvation). I’m not one to sugarcoat anything, especially the reality of hell, but have we not yet learned that that kind of hell-fire and brimstone message only creates scared individuals trying to please God with their efforts rather than living in His grace and obeying Him because they love Him? That approach certainly does not display the love which Christ calls us to (remember that it’s the second greatest commandment, right behind loving God?), and screaming it from a platform at the masses does not display “speaking the truth in love” as we’re instructed to do in Ephesians 4:15. When did anyone, in Africa OR America, think it was OK to reduce individual souls, children of the King, created in His image and loved by Jesus just as much as any one of us into a number on a piece of paper by which to measure the “success” of a day? That’s NOT OK!! When did we replace the word “disciples” in Matthew 28:19 with the word “converts” or “Christians” i.e., “Go and make converts of all nations…”? What is needed in Africa (and America for that matter) is not more evangelism done in some loveless manner directed at creating a nice number to put on paper at the end of the day to make ourselves feel good about what we’ve done, but people dedicated to loving the children of God not in fellowship with Him at this moment (whether they go to church or call themselves “Christians” or not) and CREATE DISCIPLES who are committed to obeying and serving Christ because of their great love for Him. Are you beginning to see that the Church in Africa and America really aren’t that different? The same problems plague both parts of the body, and both groups need a call to return to the foundations of our faith- not to be caught up in the formulas of religion, our own pride, our desire for wealth and financial prosperity, but the radical love given to us by God that should cause us to love and obey Him in the most radical ways imaginable.

But, as I have reflected, I know that this trip was more about my relationship with God and what He had to teach me than about the ministry we have done, and I certainly have learned a great deal- more than I could probably relate in ten thousand blogs. I have realized recently how I have lost certain aspects of walking in the Spirit and other things I’ve learned on this trip while going through the trials of our time in Africa. I just finished re-reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan, and it served as a wonderful reminder of why I’m here, what I’m doing, and the things I should be pursuing. So, I am dedicating this last week of my time in Africa to personally seeking to return to those things that have fallen by the wayside and begin once more to walk in the Spirit as God solidifies all that He’s taught me and done in my life through this time. I would appreciate your prayers as I continue to sort through and process the entirety of this trip and seek to allow God to end this disquietude I feel in my heart. I know that this is a very long blog, and I appreciate all of you who read all of it! God bless!