"The Room was Well-Preached."

I have finished my third week of this trip, having had a delightful and productive time in Tanzania. We often say that it takes about three years for the message to begin to take hold in denominations and gather some momentum.  For Tanzania, other than one smaller denomination, it has been five years.  The leaders were frustrated many times, wondering if it was possible for people in Tanzania to "get it."  And then suddenly, beginning in the fall of 2022, doors started opening.  And the momentum is continuing at great speed!  We thank God for what He is doing in reminding His people and His church to do work as worship!

On Sunday, I was able to bring a message in an Assemblies of God church about all of us being in full-time ministry but our placements being very different by comparing Jeremiah and Daniel.  I was then blessed to meet with some businesspeople who are implementing DML in their business.

On Monday, we had an awareness creation event for about thirty influential leaders in Dar es Salaam from different denominations, NGOs, and businesses.  The message was received very well.

On Tuesday, we spent the day with the DML Tanzania team doing a training of trainers.  As the demand for DML grows across denominations and cities, so does our need for additional trainers!  So we spent time with this team looking at cost analysis, pricing, boundaries, and strategic planning.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we joined the Life Ministries ministry (Campus Crusade for Christ) in their young pastors conference.  We were privileged to host workshops to share about the potential in reaching people through the marketplace, but also reminding about the life affirming call to do good work in the marketplace.  It was a privilege to join them and to listen to some good messages from various bishops and church leaders in Tanzania!  My favorite quote from one bishop was this, "The Holy Spirit does not substitute thinking."  The Holy Spirit prompts and guides, but we still need to think and plan based on that!

My hosts for this week were Pastor Anthony and Leticia (amazing leaders whom I have written about before), pictured here, who celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary this week!  They have been living and breathing DML for a number of years now and you can see how it has settled into their heart, mind, and language.  On Wednesday morning, I sent Pastor Anthony a message on WhatsApp, asking him how their night was.  His response was that it was very good, and that the room was "well-preached."  I was confused.  I thought maybe there was a church with a loudspeaker nearby that kept them up during the night (as is often the case!).  So when I saw them in later, I asked them what they meant by "well-preached."  They laughed and said, "In DML we teach that we are to preach to creation in all of our work!  This hotel has preached well to that room in giving us a place for good sleep!"  They said that they often comment on things that are "well-preached" now, as a reminder of how our work fulfills the call to "preach to all creation."

I had to laugh as they have owned this message even deeper than myself!  Well-preached indeed.

Their work among the Masai has also continued to grow and expand, and they now have three groups of believers, mostly men!  (They say, if a man converts, you have the family.  If a woman converts, you have the woman and the children.  If a child converts, you just have the child.  So they are very excited to have so many men!)  I've included a picture below of DML leader, James Kamau, and Pastor Anthony doing what is called "swallowship" with the Masai men.  

Please continue to pray for this team as it grows and adapts to the many demands.  I believe every day of June is filled with speaking engagements for them, in multiple cities!  Pray for their strength and joy, and for the message to be received as from the Lord.

On Saturday, I left Tanzania for Ethiopia where we will be doing a Training of Trainers all week for the Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church!

The Reed of God

Greetings from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where I just arrived after being in Kenya for two weeks.  God is good!

In 2005, my late husband, Robert Allen Reed, started a family blog for friends and family when we moved to Liberia.  He called it "Reeds in Liberia."

When we moved to Ghana in 2009, he recognized that we may be moving more often, as God would lead, and so he started a new blog, which he called "Reeds in the Wind."  This is what he wrote about the reason for this name (and this write-up is still on the blog today):

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A "REED IN THE WIND?"

From Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey:  The Virtue of Flexibility

Trees look strong compared with the wild reeds in the field. But when the storm comes the trees are uprooted, whereas the wild reeds, while moved back and forth by the wind, remain rooted and are standing up again when the storm has calmed down.

Flexibility is a great virtue. When we cling to our own positions and are not willing to let our hearts be moved back and forth a little by the ideas or actions of others, we may easily be broken. Being like wild reeds does not mean being wishy-washy. It means moving a little with the winds of the time while remaining solidly anchored in the ground. A humorless, intense, opinionated rigidity about current issues might cause these issues to break our spirits and make us bitter people. Let's be flexible while being deeply rooted.

PAYING ATTENTION TO THE WIND

"The wind blows where it wills." That was Jesus, who compared the spirit of God to the wind. The Reeds have followed the Wind from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Monrovia, Liberia, to Accra, Ghana...

This phrase "Reeds in the Wind" has had a great deal of meaning to us, especially after losing Bob, and continuing the adventure of following Jesus through wind and storms, seeking to be flexible while being deeply rooted.

But on my recent silent retreat, I ran into a book called The Reed of God by Caryll Houselander, written in 1944.  Caryll Houselander was a single Catholic "laywoman" who struggled with poverty.  The title caught my attention, not to mention the fact I was staying in a little hut in the woods that was named for the author.  I thought I should give it a read.  And I was delightfully surprised by what I found.  And, of course, I was surprised by what I hadn't yet considered (a life truth that will continue until I die, I suspect!).

While the common reed does good for ecosystems in wet areas, it also has the capacity to be used in other ways as well.  We know of the use of reeds in musical instruments, but they are also used for thatching, construction, arrows, baskets, beds, boats, and more.  The book asks if we are "reed pipes that God is waiting to live lyrically through, not in doing "spiritual work" (which many of us define as doing pious exercises) but through my work, my cleaning, my caring for children, my cooking, and all the duties and responsibilities I have."  It is through our ordinary life, every hour of every day, that union with God comes about.

Now you know why I like this book.  I'm beginning to look at the world differently.  Every object I see reminds me of the countless people who had a hand in bringing that object to fruition, and every object then declares the glory of God.  Human beings, made in His image, going about their business, solving problems and working, but many are yet unaware that they do this because they are made in the image of a working, creative God.  It makes me shake my head in wonder while rejoicing at the same time.  

A reed is the simplest of things, but it must be cut by a sharp knife to be shaped into something that can be used for the Shepherd's song.  A little reed can utter infinite music.  

And so it is with us.  Every person has that capacity.  And I believe every person needs to understand their capacity and their purpose.  The flexibility that is needed is not just for standing firm in the water, although that may be our call.  It also needs to be in the cutting down and shaping, for a different use, a different call that also brings glory to the Father.

I wonder about starting a new blog called A Reed for God but it is difficult to move away from something started by my late husband and co-laborer in the field many years ago.  For now, I believe that there is a new chapter of sorts that is starting in me, at this time in my life, as I learn what it means to be a reed for God in every sense of the word.

There are many exciting things happening in the work in Tanzania and we covet your prayers!  God is at work in the hearts of many to recognize the importance of work as worship!

George, with G Natural Honey in Dar es Salaam, has seen great growth in his business since taking DML classes!  Not only is he selling honey for consumption but also soap made of honey, cucumber and carrot!  

This is the message he sent after we visited his store:  "Thanks DML team for visitation to our office...your teachings brought us to this level."  Gnaturalhoney

Pregnant with Jesus: A Mother's Day reflection

My desire to better understand the life of Jesus prior to the start of his public ministry at age thirty has been growing over time.  If you have been following this blog, you will remember the post about Jesus and the death of his father, Joseph, and the subsequent responsibility of Jesus as eldest son to provide for the members of his family.  His relationship with his mother, it appears, also seemed to be strong.

On my recent silent retreat, I read a book entitled The Reed of God, written in the 1940s by a Catholic woman named Caryll Houselander.  Caryll's description of Mary, the mother of Jesus, caught my attention and I have been thinking about it since.  She writes, 

Mary was at the most 14 when the angel came to her. Perhaps she was younger. The whole world trembled on the word of a child, on a child's consent. To what was she asked to consent? First of all, to the descent of the Holy Spirit, to surrender her littleness to the infinite love, and as a result to become the mother of Christ.

It was so tremendous, yet so passive. 

She was not asked to do anything herself but to let something be done to her. She was not asked to renounce anything, but to receive an incredible gift. She was not asked to lead a special kind of life, to retire to the temple and live as a nun, to cultivate suitable virtues or claim special privileges. 

She was simply to remain in the world, to go forward with her marriage to Joseph. To live the life of an artisan's wife, just what she had planned to do when she had no idea that anything out of the ordinary would ever happen to her. 

It was, it seemed, almost as if God's becoming man and being born of a woman were ordinary. The whole thing was to happen secretly. There was to be no announcement... 

...The one thing God did ask of her was the gift of her humanity.

While on the one hand, Mary was asked to do something extraordinary, at the same time, her life continued to be very ordinary.  She was a wife, a mother, a homemaker.  She was not exempt from any human experience.  She even dealt with poverty, giving the offering of two doves for her sacrifice (Luke 2).  

She was "simply" asked to give herself to God, body and soul.  She was asked to bring Christ into the world.

And in many ways, we are asked to do the same.  We are not asked to do something extraordinary or to be set apart...but to give of ourselves, body and soul, to the one true God.

We too are asked to bring Christ into the world.  We are asked to be the hands and feet of Jesus.  We are asked to have the same attitude as Christ.  When we help a sick friend, or do an excellent job at work, or cook a good meal, we do it in such a way that Christ may serve through us.

By His own will, Jesus was dependent on Mary during her pregnancy.  He went where she went, her breath was his breath, he could not speak.  In a similar way, Jesus dependent on us today.  We must carry him to the workplace, to the hospitals and prisons, to the dying.  There are many places that He may never go unless we take Him to them.

In fact, we may be working at a place that feels purposeless and empty, full of waste and weariness.  But it may be that God has sent us there because if not for us, Christ would not be there.

And so, Christ is growing in us.  He is forming Himself in us. It is not time for us to see His face.  That day will come.  It is a beautiful mystery.  

We can carry a deep gratitude, a deep joy, a deep wonder at Christ in us - just as a pregnant mother experiences that same wonder.

Caryll goes on to say this:

The gift of Christ's body makes everyone a priest, because everyone can offer the body of Christ on the altar of his/her own life.  But the offering must be the offering of a human being who is intensely alive, a potent humanness, great sorrow and great joy, a life lit up with the flame of love, fierce fasts and thirsts and feasts of sheer joy. 

1 Peter 2:9 says that we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood.  We are part of the priesthood of believers, and our parishes are those places of influence where we spend our time.

While I am thankful for my own amazing mother this day, I am also thankful for Mary, the mother of Jesus.  And I'm mostly thankful that Mary's story can be my story - it can be all of our stories (men and women alike!).  May God find us to be "intensely alive, with fierce fasts and thirsts, and feasts of sheer joy" as we carry Christ into the world.

Release of paper: BAM and the Church

On Saturday, May 6, I left for a one-month trip to East Africa, starting in Kenya, and from there going to Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Burundi.  There will be a good number of exciting meetings and trainings during these visits.  I thank God for the opportunity to meet the amazing teams that are growing and maturing in each place!

In other exciting news, a paper that we started writing as a global consortium of BAM Global has finally been released!  We started the process of writing this paper in April of 2021, completed our portion of the writing by June 2022, and since then it has been undergoing edits and revisions. 

It is very exciting to see it come out now and we hope and pray that it will be read by many who are looking for the role that the global church can play in the growing Business as Mission (BAM) movement.  

The paper can be downloaded here:  BAM and the Church – BAM Global.

We divided the paper into three key segments to discern the opportunities and challenges in the relationship between BAM and the Church, and in each area, we addressed a way forward.  The first section explored dealt with the theological challenges, the second section explored structural challenges in the local church, and the third section explored cultural challenges.  We also shared stories and testimonies of churches who have embraced BAM and the impact that is being had on the church itself.

We invite you to read this and share it with others as well.  And let us know your thoughts!  We would love to hear how this resonates with you!  

Enough Pallets to Whet your Palate!

Maybe you have been receiving the DML emails this past month as we have been raising funds for scholarships to help pastors and business owners attend the DML trainings.  These trainings release them to do work as an act of worship, with support and discipling from the church.  Last year, we trained more than 3,000 pastors, 4,200 seminary students, and 8,800 business owners in fourteen countries!  We couldn't do this without you!  We have not yet reached our goal of raising $30,000 in 30 days for scholarships and so we submit this request for your prayerful consideration.  Please go here for more information.

While the scholarships go to those who are not able to pay for the training themselves, we continue to see and hear that this ministry is needed in the global church, irrespective of income or location.  The stories that DML has been telling over the past month have been focused on the majority world, but today I want to tell you a story that is much closer to home.

Bill was a member of my church in Grand Rapids.  He and his wife faithfully served as the church bookkeepers for thirty years.  As a former deacon and member on council, I got to know them in that capacity.  I knew that Bill's wife, Nancy, worked at an architectural firm as she helped my daughter get a summer job there, but I never learned (or asked) where Bill worked.  To be honest, as an accountant, I assumed he worked in an accounting firm.

But we all know what happens when we assume.  And yup...that happened to me here.  

Bill and Nancy have been regular supporters of DML and Bill will often send a short response to my blogs, which always encourages me.  A few weeks ago, he responded to one of my blogs from India, saying that he thought recycling pallets might be a good business idea for India.  Curious, I asked him where such a random idea came from.  And that was when he told me that he worked for a company called Kamps Pallets for the past thirty years.  After looking them up online, I immediately asked him if he could give me a tour of the place and he obliged.

And wow.  Amazing stuff!  This company was started by the owner (a Christian) who noticed pallets in the dump here in Grand Rapids and pulling them aside to repair and sell them. It has now grown into having 400 national facilities across the US, with more than 2000 employees.  This makes them one of the largest pallet companies in the country.  Much of their work includes recycling everything, right down to the used nails!  I watched the employees put together a pallet from recycled wood in about 30 seconds!

As I heard the story, I could hear the Christian values that underlie how this company works.  I saw the scripture in the conference room.  Bill told me that you don't have to be educated or speak English to work at this place, and since the work is "piece-rate pay" (which means that every pallet dismantled, built, or board cut is paid a price for the unit that is completed), they don't have to spend as much money on supervisors as everyone is internally motivated to be as productive as they can be - and they are therefore well-paid!  It seemed clear to me that this company is a very large parish, with the potential to do good work that helps businesses, is good for the environment, caring for many employees and therefore their families, with a desire to serve God.

At the end of my tour, I asked Bill whether he felt the support of the local church in this work, and like most others, he said no.  He had been affirmed for the bookkeeping work that he did for the church but he wasn't even sure how many people (including me!) knew what he did from Monday-Saturday.

I believe it is high time for this to change!  The purpose of the church is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, which doesn't just happen in the four walls of the church, but it happens as we each enter our own mission field, in our own unique settings, during the week.  

If that message resonates with you, and you would like to see people supported and discipled by their church, please join us by giving to our scholarship campaign today!  And if you have already given, thank you!  And if you can't give financially, please continue to pray for our teams and trainers who continue to reach as many people as they can with this empowering message.