- One man shared that his father died in that area in February. But because he is Anglophone and had left the area, he is considered a traitor and would be killed if he returned. Therefore, he was not able to attend his own father’s funeral.
- One woman shared that her father’s house was burned down a few months ago. The reason was that he gave her in marriage to a Francophone. These soldiers happen to respect this man, and so they allowed him and his loved ones to get out of his house before setting it on fire.
- A woman who runs a school reported that before this crisis, no one could enter the school grounds in police/guard uniforms with guns, as that created stress for the children. Now there are guards with guns on every school campus. This has an impact on the children and their sense of security.
- A woman who was kidnapped watched as twelve others were beaten in front of her. This was her second time being kidnapped. The first time she was gone for two weeks. This time, it was about 15 hours. She had to pay two million francs (about $3,500) as a "liberty tax" or risk having five of her employees kidnapped. But they also took her car and used it to transport others who were kidnapped. That car can now be identified as a “rebel” car, which puts her at risk for driving it. She is still sorting out what to do.
Monday, April 29, 2024
Ghost Town in Cameroon
Monday, April 22, 2024
Divine Dimensions: A 3-D Approach to Discipleship
As we dialogue with churches and pastors who are so
passionate about the Great Commission, I continue to gain new insights into the
message that God has invited us to share.
This past week, one pastor said, “I now realize that I have been keeping
my people in captivity. I have held them
back from being part of the priesthood of believers.” Another said, “I have not been a coach to my
members for how they can be ambassadors for Christ outside the building. I have been too focused on my programs and
not on how God can use them.”
When we equip every member to be the church in every place
and space, we begin to experience the fullness that God intended from the very
beginning.
We serve a 3-D God who invites not only humanity to worship Him, but all of creation! Let's join Him by helping all of creation to glorify God!
Monday, April 15, 2024
"My Vocation is Love"
Saying, "My vocation is love" sounded to my cynical ears like the simplified version of "why can't we all just get along" or the song "Kumbaya."
My reaction was a knee-jerk reaction to my thoughts that it's just not that simple.
But then again, maybe it is. As I thought about it further, I realized that I needed to hear that message today...and will need to hear it again and again going forward.
The reality is that we have been given the gift of life, and with this gift, we are each in full-time ministry of glorifying God.
And the principal way in which we glorify God is by being His hands and feet.
And the best way to represent Him as His hands and feet is through love. Not love in the huggy, kissy, giddy, goo-goo sense of the word. But love in terms of commitment, in terms of Agape.
Having passed through Easter, we have heard over and again how loving Christ was to give His life for us. And because I have been loved much, I am compelled to love as well.
And while we often have head knowledge of that vocation, love often is replaced by shoulds, oughts, rules, regulations, calendars, appointments, and general busyness. All of that busyness is often part of how we seek to express that love - by doing our work with excellence, and providing goods and services that allow customers and employees to flourish - but ironically, love can be lost in that process.I begin to care more about deadlines than being present to my colleagues and seeing them. Before I know it, I am stressed, they are stressed, and we begin to focus on numbers and deadlines only, forgetting about being present to each other; forgetting about love. So we have to hit the "reset" button and come back to what is important. As C.S. Lewis states, we have been made for another world, therefore the way we follow our calling and our work is going to be different than those who are not Christian.
In DML, we teach a quadruple bottom line: economic, environmental, social, and missional. We are developing tools for every person in their workplace to learn how to be the church (the hands and feet of Christ in each workplace) fulfilling aspects of each of these four goals. What does it mean to love as a taxi driver? As a hairstylist? As a baker? As a cleaner? As an employer? While we may have different placements for our work, we keep in mind that loving our neighbor needs to be applied with intentionality in each place.
Saint Therese's workplace was different than most of us, but the vocation of love is the same. She is quoted as saying the following:
Yes, my Beloved, I wish to spend my life thus... I have no other means of proving my love except by strewing flowers, that is to say, letting no little sacrifice pass, no look, no word--profiting by the littlest actions, and doing them out of love. I wish to suffer out of love and to rejoice out of love; thus I shall strew flowers before your throne. I shall not find one without scattering its petals before you... and in strewing my flowers I will sing (can one weep in doing so joyous an action?) I will sing, even if my roses must be gathered from among thorns; and the longer and sharper the thorns, the sweeter shall be my song. (My Vocation is Love! - Therese of Lisieux (pathsoflove.com)
May you move in love today, being willing to stop and "strew flowers" as God gives you the opportunity! I pray to do the same, as I spend time in Cameroon.
Monday, April 8, 2024
The Importance of Travel
In Cameroon, I will join the DML Cameroon team to do some ministry with the Full Gospel Church, teach Economics of Hope, and do a training of trainers. One of the DML team members recently lost her husband to cancer and another team members was kidnapped (and has since been released) just last week. The conflict in Cameroon is now going on seven years without much change in sight. We ask for your prayers as this team deals with these difficult and sorrowful events and seeks to trust God amidst hardship.
In Sierra Leone, we will be working with the Wesleyan Church who started DML last year. More than 35 churches have completed a business month (four weeks of teaching/preaching/highlighting the God of Business and Work as Worship), and so we will be teaching the Basic Business Principles and finding a way forward to have a training of trainers for this denomination. Please pray for this denomination as it seeks to make workplace discipleship an integral part of the local church.Lastly, I will be traveling to South Africa, where DML has an opportunity to engage again with the Full Gospel Church as well as some other strategic meetings in the area. As we continue to meet the body of Christ around the world who "speak the same language," we continue to pray that God will show us how to link arms with the global church, while discerning how and where to spend our time, treasure, and talent. I appreciate that for your prayers as well.
One of our DML partners posted the poem below about travel, which resonated with me and reminded me to be very grateful for the chance to travel and learn from people from so many different walks of life. Travel helps us to see many things, including that what we think is the norm is often not the norm. It helps us to see that what we think is black and white is often not black and white. It is invaluable for learning how to love your neighbor. And remember, traveling is not just getting on a plane or in a car. Sometimes traveling is going right next door to people we don't know, as the world (cultures and people) has come to each of us in many ways.
Sunday, March 31, 2024
Lessons about holistic worship from a Hindu
Last week the DML Global team had our monthly book club meeting. We are currently reading a book called Whole Life Discipleship. (How cool is it to be in a book club with Christians from many different countries, cultures, and perspectives! What a privilege!)
One participant from Nigeria shared the following excerpt from a related book, having to do with a Christian who had a run-in with a Hindu and discovered a surprising perspective of that person's perception of a Christian's relationship to faith and work. This perception of Christians should be a wake-up call for the church at large.
The excerpt is below, with emphasis added. The book is called, Contagious Disciple Making by David Watson and Paul Watson:My first learning experience came when I had the unique opportunity to witness to a member of my host community. He was an old shopkeeper who was well-liked and had no problems with me as a foreigner. We conversed almost daily. I liked him, and I think he liked me. I did not hide the fact that I was a Christian. Everyone assumed I was anyway since I was white. He did not hide the fact that he was a Hindu.
One
day our conversation strayed to religion. As a trained witness I was thrilled with the
opportunity. But as it turned out, the opportunity was one for me to
learn, not to lead another person into the Kingdom of God. The old
man told me that he just did not understand Christianity. There was no
way he could give up his religion, which was so much a part of his daily life, to
accept a new religion that from his perspective was so much NOT a part of the daily
lives of the Christians he knew. He began every day with meditations, offerings,
and prayers to his god. As the day went on, he would stop for more prayer
and meditation. Each business transaction was blessed in prayer, and each dollar
made thankfully offered to his god.
Everyone knew his devotion, and that devotion was as obvious at home and in private as it was in public. The questions he presented to me shoved me into some long and deep thought and prayer.
“Why would I want to give up the god I can see for one I cannot see?”
“Why would I want to worship only one day a week when now I worship several times every day?”
“Why would I want to do business without the presence of my god to oversee it and bless it?”
“Why would I want to try to convince others of my holiness with words, when they can see my devotion to my god?”
“Why would I want to let only words teach my children, rather than my life?”
This
old man had a limited and distorted view of a committed Christian’s life, but the form
of secret or private worship that was the norm for most Christians
he knew or observed was certainly contributing to his misunderstanding.
I realized this had to change.
Something to think about, for sure.
As I have traveled through India, I have seen many businesses with their gods very proudly on display. As I have traveled in areas dominated by Muslims, I see them breaking their workday up to pray publicly, bowing down on mats on the sidewalks. I don't see the same thing for Christians.
I can understand where this man's perceptions came from.
For Christians in the West, Christianity is largely kept to a restricted role. Many Christians give off a perception and practice that there is a separation of faith and work. Western Christians seem to have accepted that religion must be not only be separate but hidden. Yet Muslims and Hindus both worship and display their faith freely and openly.
Have we lost something that needs to be brought back again?
Longstanding Christian traditions that had a stronger correlation between faith and work seem to be lost. There have been times when we were much more closely aligned in nation-building and the wedding of our faith and work. That wedding of faith and work doesn't just mean witnessing to others.
It may mean simply acknowledging who we are and whose we are.
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Frequent mistake: Seeking meaning FROM work.
I love the big difference that these little words can make. Deriving meaning FROM my work is what many of us do. We want joy, satisfaction, affirmation, compensation, and more.
But what if we flipped the question and asked what meaning I can bring TO my work? I have found that the best way to help people think through this is to ask them, "What is God doing in your workplace?" First of all in me, and then through me to the work?
Sometimes people laugh when they hear this question and say they feel that God isn't even present there. But we serve a sovereign God - there is no place where He is not present and therefore working. When I begin to ask God what He is doing, He reveals that and also begins to show me how I can join Him in that work.
Suddenly the focus of my work turns away from myself and what I can get, to God and what I can bring.
We are to be salt, light, and leaven. Most of us don't eat salt by itself. If I offer you a tablespoon of salt to eat by itself, thinking it a thoughtful gift, almost everyone will say, "No, thank you." Salt comes in the context of food, bringing flavor and preservation. For most of us, that food - that context - is our workplace. Likewise, leaven or yeast works from the inside, quietly and usually in darkness. Again, it must interact with the dough. No one wants to eat yeast straight.God created us to work and, in our work, we are to be the hands and feet of Christ. That means we bring value and meaning TO our work. We do it with excellence, with integrity, with joy. We have an economic bottom line, being fruitful and multiplying. We have an environmental bottom line, being stewards of God's creation. We have a social bottom line, loving our customers, colleagues, vendors, competitors, and suppliers with time, treasure, and/or talent. And we have a missional bottom line - being a disciple and making disciples.
It's not easy to change our perspective from wanting work to do something for us, to us doing something in our work. But the beautiful thing is that when we do that, any work and any position can become meaningful. Because God is also there working, and He invites us to join Him.
May your work this week open your eyes to see what God is doing in that space.