Remembering Operation Auca

When I first read, in my teens, about the five missionaries who were martyred in Ecuador 53 years ago today, I was surprised to discover that it had been big news in the States when it happened, because my parents had never mentioned a word about it in the years since. Of course, my parents would not have been supporters of missionaries trying to get people to change their religion, as they both believed that everyone would eventually come to God, if not in this world then the next.

I was inspired by the stories of these brave missionaries and their faith in God to go to such lengths to take the Gospel to people who did not exactly welcome them with open arms. For a long time I planned on being a missionary to unreached peoples like that, to translate the Bible into a language that doesn’t even have a written form yet. For a variety of reasons I became, instead, first a Spanish teacher then a clerk for a manufacturing company, then a computer operator/programmer/trainer/help desk/etc.

But when the movie The End of the Spear came out in 2006, I was excited about seeing it. We waiting to rent it on DVD, and I found the movie very inspiring as well. It is a story of faith, of the power of God, and of forgiveness. I wondered, as I watched it, just how accurate it was to the details of the true story it was based on, and hoped it did follow the true story fairly closely. But there were aspects that were unfamiliar to me from the books I had read about the lives of Jim Elliott and Nate Saint, so I tried to find info on how much the details of certain events were true.

The Market-Driven Church

I try not to have knee-jerk reactions to things that are different from what I am used to or how I think they should be. But my reaction to the kind of “church franchising” described in this article is that it is a Bad Idea.

1. Identifying a church with a brand image distorts its primary identity, which is about Jesus Christ, not Flamingo Road. Many local churches do identify themselves with a street or town name, but that is because that’s where the people are. Church is very much about community, and when I went to Langhorne Presbyterian Church I knew that I was worshipping and serving with people who lived in and around Langhorne. I can’t imagine wanting to be part of a “Langhorne Presbyterian” franchise without having ever set foot in Langhorne or knowing a single person who lived there.

2. What kind of local leadership can you develop when the sermons are preached by a man who is physically located over 2000 miles away? The sermons may convey a good message, but that pastor can’t train lay leaders or see how to develop the gifts of the people in the church. If lay leaders do emerge, they may be discouraged from using gifts of teaching or preaching because the franchise already provides that.

3. The message of the sermon is necessarily going to be either very broad or risk being irrelevant to the people who hear it in other places. The message of the Gospel is universal, but the life lessons that people need to apply from it vary a great deal depending on their environment and circumstances. I go to a large church where the senior pastor does not know everyone personally (small groups provide the needed fellowship and accountability among people who know each other well), but at least he has a pretty good idea what issues people who live in this community are likely to be facing.

I’m sure I could find more to criticize about it. Perhaps I need to try to think about what is good about it – but my gut reaction to it is so negative that my normal open-mindedness seems to be taking a leave of absence.

Missions, medicine, and machetes

It’s always cool to read an article in the paper about people I know. This one is about a mission trip to Guatemala by a team from our church, and I know several if not most of the people who went. The dentist mentioned in the article is married to the orthopedist my son went to, and they hosted/led the small group Bible study I was in last fall.

Almost everyone in the group had been to Guatemala on a previous trip – that was how they all got to know each other. Since I know Spanish, they thought it would be great for me to go also. I’m not against the idea of going, but I question whether it’s the best way for me to minister, or to use the resources of time and money God has given me.

Native Languages

I’ve always been fascinated by foreign languages. I remember as a child, when my older sister began studying French, trying to understand what “French” was. As best as I could figure out, it was a different way of saying things. French for “please” was “s’il vous plait,” French for “thank you” was “merci,” and French for “What is it?” was “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” (which in my mind I spelled keskesay).

Having learned those simple phrases, I proceeded to ask my parents how to say “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” in French. They tried to explain that it was French, but I persisted in asking. In my mind, every word or phrase that I could understand had a French equivalent that was foreign to me. Now that I understand a new phrase, there should be a French (i.e. foreign) way to say it.

Caring for Orphans

This morning at church we learned about a new mission our church is undertaking, in partnership with VisionTrust International. The president of VisionTrust, Matt Storer, talked to us about how God led him into this ministry of caring for “abused, orphaned and extremely poor children living in third world countries.”

I have often been concerned that I fail in regards to James’ description of “true religion” meaning that we ”visit orphans and widows in their affliction.” I have known a few widows but no orphans. Several years ago my husband and I looked into the possibility of adopting a child from the foster care system, but the diagnosis of our own son as mildly autistic meant we were already dealing with a special needs child. The children coming from the foster care system had even greater special needs (usually emotional issues) and the recommendation was that they would need so much care and attention that such an adoption would not be advisable, at least at this time in our family’s life.

As a young person right out of college, I had signed up to sponsor a child through Compassion International. As a single person with a simple lifestyle, I was pleased to be able to serve God in that way, along with supporting my alma mater (Cedarville University) and the church I had attended as a student in Madrid the previous year. But within a year my car died, and even the payments on a used Chevette were more than I could manage on my meager salary while still making those monthly donations. I felt very bad about telling Compassion I couldn’t sponsor the child anymore, and never signed up to do it again for fear I would not be able to live up to my commitment.

What I like about my church’s partnership is that we will be helping support an orphanage in Liberia as a church body. Many individuals in the church are also interested in supporting individual children through VisionTrust, but I can help without the same fear that I will let a child down due to my own financial difficulties (a struggle now as much as if not more so than when I was young and single). And we will also be looking for ways for the children in our church to be involved. Even the 5- through 7-year-olds I work with can write simple letters and draw pictures to send – and I know how much children love receiving mail.