When Overdoing Something Results in It Being Underdone

Imagine a carpenter building a table. He puts all his time, energy, and resources into crafting one leg—strong, polished, beautifully carved. But he neglects the other three legs. When he finally lifts the table, it topples. It can’t stand, no matter how perfect that one leg is.

In the same way, some churches and believers place an excessive focus on the Great Commission — making disciples and spreading the gospel — that they neglect the rest of Jesus’ teachings: loving one another, pursuing justice, cultivating spiritual depth, stewarding creation, and working with excellence.

The Great Commission is essential, but it was never meant to stand alone. Christianity without the fullness of Christ’s commands becomes unstable and imbalanced.

Jordan Raynor, in his book, The Sacredness of Secular Work, explains that the idea that evangelism is the only thing God calls us to do is relatively new in Christian history.  For the first 1,600 years of the Church's life, Matthew 28 was not read and understood as fanfare for Missiology. In fact, before the 17th century, the Great Commission was largely ignored when discussing the Church's missional assignment. In fact, the "Great Commission” label didn't even appear in print until the 1600s. But in the last few centuries, we've begun acting as though sharing the gospel is the only eternal, significant thing we can do.

The CEO of Operation Mobilization said, “I may be labeled a heretic here, but I actually think we have overplayed the Great Commission.” I believe this to be true, especially as seen in mission movements.  Millions and even billions of dollars are spent on helping every person hear the gospel, but comparatively, almost none is spent on helping people know how to live it out.  We make converts but we don't make disciples.  I don't say this lightly.  However, after twenty years of mission work, watching and participating in mission organizations and church-planting movements, we continue to reduce the message and teaching of Christ to one part of His message, rather than the whole package.

Please don't get me wrong.  I believe we are to share the good news with those who have not heard it.  However, I think that we need to invest in the priesthood of every believer to equip them to integrate their faith and work, so that they are living disciples, "preaching constantly and using words only when necessary." 

The real heresy of overdependence on the Great Commission is that it hurts our people by devaluing 99% of their lives in which they are not explicitly preaching the Gospel.

Jordan Raynor shares that there are five problems with making the Great Commission the only Commission:

1.      Jesus never did. Jesus told them to obey, teach others, to obey everything he had commanded them to do. The Gospels recorded him giving about 50 unique commands. After Jesus's resurrection, he appeared to the apostles over 40 days and spoke about the Kingdom of God. But the Great Commission text takes about 20 seconds to read out loud. And yet we have interpreted it as the exclusive mission of the Church.

2.      It leads to a diminished view of Christ's redemption. Jesus came to reverse the curse in full and usher in the renewal of all things. But when we only preach that the church's Commission is to save souls, it inevitably leads us to an implicit and often explicit message that the only thing God will save in the end is people.

3.      It neglects the other aspects of the Kingdom. God's Kingdom contains far more than just the King and his subjects. It encompasses the intangible qualities of justice, peace, and love, as well as the tangible work of our hands. When we focus solely on the Great Commission, we can easily overlook these other aspects of the Kingdom. Justice doesn't matter. Beauty doesn't matter. Cultural excellence doesn't matter. This leads to the fair accusation that Christians are so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good.

4.      Ironically, it makes us less effective at the Great Commission, for at least three reasons. First, it is when Christians are the most “earthly good” that Christianity becomes the most attractive. Quote from NT Wright: “It is when the Church acts with decisive power in the real world, to build and run the successful school or medical clinic, to free slaves or remit debts, to establish a housing project or a credit union for those ashamed to go to the bank, to enable drug users and pushers to kick the habit and lifestyle, that people will take the message of Jesus seriously. Second, when we turn the Great Commission into the only Commission, Christians feel guilty for working in the very places where they're most likely to carry out the Great Commission. According to Tim Keller's research, 80% or more of evangelism in the early church was done not by ministers or evangelists, but by mere Christians working as farmers, tent makers, and mothers. That was true in the early church and is likely to be true in the foreseeable future, as non-Christians are more reticent than ever to darken the door of a church, and entire nations are closing their doors to Christian missionaries. Third, making the Great Commission the only Commission creates unbiblical obstacles to following in Jesus. Young people are leaving the Church in part because of our overemphasis on the Great Commission. We tell our young people that if they really love Jesus, they will move to a mud hut 5000 miles away from home to work as a full-time missionary. Overemphasizing the Great Commission may keep people from ever committing to Christ in the first place.

5.      It blocks us from seeing the full extent of how our work matters for eternity. God has set eternity in the human heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11). But if our work has only instrumental value, then most of us are wasting most of our time. What is the purpose of building a business, working a register, or planning an event if those actions don't lead to an opportunity to share the gospel? Sure, they are a means of loving our neighbor as ourselves in the present. Not beyond the here and now. How do these actions matter for eternity? Due to our modern emphasis on the Great Commission, we must travel an unexpected path to find the answer to this question.

Sadly, our emphasis on the Great Commission has not yielded the results that were hoped for, according to the "State of the Great Commission report" released by Lausanne last year.  In this report, we observe that the percentage of Christians has remained relatively unchanged for the past 125 years, at approximately 33%.  As Rick Warren says, "Methods are many, principles are few; methods change often, principles never do."  If we aren't seeing the return on investment, we must look at other ways.  Doing more of the same - or overdoing something - doesn't work.

The principle of making disciples is important.  But it must be done within the context of whole-life discipleship by every believer.

But God: Living and Working in Africa for 20 years!

It was twenty years ago this week (July 21, 2005) that Bob, Renita, Hannah, and Noah said tearful goodbyes to house, family, and friends in Grand Rapids, MI, and moved to Liberia.

Twenty years.

In many ways, it seems like a lifetime ago.  So much has happened in twenty years.

Liberia was a challenging place to live, especially in the immediate aftermath of the civil war.  There was no running water or electricity in the entire country.  Break-ins happened every night from the recently disarmed ex-combatants.  We had no colleagues there to guide us on how to live and work in a culture that was so very different from what we were accustomed to.

But God showed up.  And we fell in love with the place and the people.  And the work prospered - from counseling to community development to business development.

And after 3.5 years, we left the work in competent Liberian hands and moved to Ghana.

Ghana had a school that Hannah and Noah could attend (after being homeschooled in Liberia).  It had the hope of running water and electricity (which actually turned out to be more frustrating than not having it at all, because it would go out daily, and we never knew when it would come back).  I was tasked with coordinating business development work in Liberia, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria.  Bob was tasked with promoting peace and reconciliation in West Africa.

But God called Bob home, just seven months after we moved to Ghana, on March 20, 2010.  Hannah was sixteen years old, Noah was fourteen years old, and I was 41 years old.  Our family shifted in a way that we never anticipated or expected.  In a still new and foreign land, a land with witch camps for women who have these types of events in their lives, we now wondered what to do. 

Despite being away from family and friends, and in a culture that felt less welcoming than Liberia, we felt led not to make a significant change and to stay the course until God showed us what to do.  So, I finished my three-year commitment, Hannah graduated from high school and went to university, and then Noah graduated as well.  This takes us to June 2012.  I no longer felt that teaching wealth creation without ongoing discipleship by the church was a responsible approach.  I was about to leave Ghana with no idea of what to do next.

But God showed up, just in that last week, through a conference speaker named Dr. Phil Walker with International Christian Ministries.  He was frustrated with not seeing the church have an impact on the nation, and I was frustrated with doing business development without the church. So, an opportunity presented itself to bring this work into the church by starting with a seminary in Kenya.  

I moved to Kenya in January 2013, and it was there that Discipling Marketplace Leaders was born. Pictured here is the first class that took the Church-based Business as Mission course in February 2013. It started slow.  Changing the paradigm of church leaders and denominations to view the church not as a building and its programs, but as the people and every sphere of influence, especially the workplace. This change doesn't happen quickly.  

But God showed up again.  We began to see where He was working and joined Him in that process.  We decided to operate not on a "push" but a "pull."  Twelve years later, we are working in twenty-five countries with thirty partners across three continents.

The work has not been easy.  There have been sacrifices, pain, and challenges.  There has been a loss of friendships and connections due to the difficulty of trying to live in multiple places simultaneously.  The stress of fundraising takes its toll.

But God continues to show up, and there has also been incredible joy in joining Him in what He is doing.  His promise that His yoke is easy and His burden is light is right, especially if I keep my eyes focused on Him.  I have been blessed to meet hundreds of faithful disciples of Jesus who are willing to sacrifice, disciples, and build the church.  I’ve been blessed with remarriage, and my husband, Michael, is incredibly patient and supportive of my long trips and my unending burden to share this message.

There’s no one else I’d want to follow BUT GOD.  And I’m thankful for how He shows up through each of you in encouragement and partnership!  Thank you for being on this journey with me!

A Fowl Problem with a Faithful Solution

[Warning:  this post talks about animal droppings!  Sorry if it offends!]

During the entrepreneurship training in Burundi last week, our DML leader from Cameroon divided the young adults into groups based on their residence and asked them to address the question, "What challenges is this community facing and how can we solve the problem?"  The underlying root of the question is the understanding that every social problem is a business opportunity.

One group said that their avocados all come ripe at the same time, and they don't have a market.  They decided to begin processing avocado oil for hair and body lotion and grinding the seeds for animal feed.

Another group said there was a lack of charcoal in their community for cooking.  They recognized a need for alternatives to charcoal for cooking, including recycling waste.

Another group said that everyone in their community harvests their maize at the same time, and they all sell at the lowest price because they don't have the means to store it well.  They learned that they could use the "Zimbabwe model" of boiling their maize and then drying it, and no pests would bother it.  They also discovered that the leaves of the neem tree, which is known as the King of Trees, can be dried and sprinkled among the bags of stored maize, as weevils (the common pest) hate neem.

And so on.  It was really great to hear their thoughts, and they had time throughout the week to discuss and plan together how they could organize themselves to address this.  

For me, as I couldn't listen to the individual group discussions in Kirundi, my mind immediately went to my community and the problem that I am facing:  goose poop.  Geese are everywhere.  And apparently, they poop every 12 minutes.  So, thirty geese in my yard, pooping every 12 minutes, means 360 poops per day.  You can't hardly walk without stepping on it.  I've tried everything to chase them away.  They keep coming back.  We aren't allowed to kill them (not that I could), but we are allowed to break their eggs to slow the population (but I can't do that either).  

So, what to do?  As the groups were pondering their challenge, I sat and pondered this.  We know that everything God created is good...so what is the good in this?  I was still stuck and didn't have an idea.

The next day, the agricultural speakers from Uganda trained the young adults on "chicken poop soup."  They shared that the white substance in chicken droppings is nitrogen, which is very good for growing crops.  They showed them how to make chicken poop soup.  

And suddenly the lightbulb went off for me.  Having avoided stepping on goose poop for years now, I am pretty familiar with how it looks...and there is a lot of white in fresh droppings...which means nitrogen!  I knew it was good for the grass, but what if I could harvest it, make goose poop soup, and help my own gardens grow...plus maybe some of my neighbors' gardens as well!  

As I shared from Philippians 4:9 on the last day of the conference, I shared my goose poop soup plan and told them that the next time they see me, they can call me the "Goose Poop Soup Lady." Philippians 4:9 tells us to put into action what we have learned.  It says:

“What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things.  And the God of peace will be with you.”

During the week, we learned, received, heard, and saw how to do farming in a way that is restorative to creation and good for the farmer as well.  We learned to be innovative and problem solvers in our communities with our time, treasure, and talent.  And now it's time to put it into practice.  The verse encourages us to have the confidence to tell others to do what they see in us as followers of Christ, knowing that it will lead others closer to Christ as well.  It's scary to say, "Follow me as I follow Christ" because I know how often I fail!  But when we live out what we have learned, we should be able to increase in that confidence.  And most of how we teach and preach is by our actions, not our words.  So, how we work, how we treat God's beautiful creation, how we seek the flourishing of others over self, this is how we practice what we have learned.  

From teaching about God directly to finding a use for goose poop, and everything in between, our call to do our work as worship is holistic! May God help us view our challenges as opportunities to bring God-inspired solutions!

What can you do with $6.71?

What could you do with $6.71?  For many North Americans, it is not a lot of money and so it doesn't inspire a lot of imagination.  We easily spend that amount on a cup of coffee, without thinking twice.

However, in Burundi, the story is different.

I was blessed last week to have attended our second Youth Work as Worship conference in Burundi, attended by 400 youth.  We are halfway through a five-year study to assess the impact of workplace discipleship on young adults aged 18-35 in four different cities and twelve different churches.  Last year, after 1.5 years of teaching and training on entrepreneurship, we were already hearing exciting testimonies.  But this year's testimonies topped those.  

I couldn't capture all the testimonies, but the first three young adults shared a similar theme: how they used the equivalent of $6.71 to get their businesses started.  This was the amount of money that each youth was given at last year's conference to help them get from their homes to the bus pick-up point, and to cover their food for their travel.

The first woman, Janet, shared that before starting with DML, she believed students couldn't earn money - they just had to study.  But after the training, she learned differently.  She had been taught to differentiate between her needs, wants, and desires, and began to save some money (about $11) when she was given the $6.71 travel funds. While her peers were buying food and getting transport to their homes, she decided to keep that money and add it to her savings.  Now she had almost $17.  With that money, she bought a piglet.  She raised it and sold it for $117.  She purchased another piglet for $34 and diversified her business by investing in a rooster and a chicken.  Those two produced seven chicks, and in a few days, there should be six more. 

Janice tells a similar story.  She had been doing business but was taking loan after loan and not moving forward.  At last year's Youth Work as Worship conference, she was awarded a prize for "Best Business Idea" and received an award of $17.  Then she received the transport funds of $6.71, and now she had $23.51.  With that, she purchased flour, sugar, and charcoal in bulk and began selling them retail.  Eventually, she too bought a piglet, and that pig is now full-grown and about to give birth to piglets.  She no longer takes loans, saves regularly to invest in her business, and is thrilled to see that the culture is changing, allowing women to do business.

Lastly, Jessalyn used her transportation funds to buy bananas.  She turned that $6.71 into $67.  She bought a goat for $60, and it turned out to be pregnant.  She continued to sell and save and then purchased another goat, who also turned out to be pregnant!  So she soon she will have four goats.  She also has purchased a chicken and hopes to start enjoying eggs soon.  She is no longer dependent on her parents.  

These are just a few of the results of teaching over 2.5 years.  A successful Burundian businessman who started with nothing told them that they all have capital - their mind, their hands, their feet, and their health. 

This week, we spent an intensive time teaching them about conservation agriculture, including how to plant high-yield crops, how to reduce the cost of inputs by using natural products, how to make compost, and os much more.  They were taught how to raise rabbits.  They were taught the importance of saving, which serves as a refuge, and how to save even with a very small income.  They learned how to make perfume, how to problem-solve and innovate, and how to package. They heard inspirational testimonies from Burundian businessmen who had failed repeatedly in business until they finally succeeded, and they chanted, "Never give up!"  They were told that they could make a difference in their families, communities, churches, and country.  And they didn't have to leave Burundi to do so.

At the same time, leaders of four different denominations were present and they are ready to go full steam with this for all their local churches.  They have already been trained to be trainers and have a full-time person assigned to disseminate this message across Burundi.  And two of the pastors where the youth are attending told us that they have been able to build new church buildings because of the increase in tithes.  

God is good!  And when people change their mindset from poverty to potential, it is amazing!  We are deeply grateful to our partner in Burundi and their ability to convey this message with such passion and integrity.