mbjones

The WORD became flesh and moved into {our} neighborhood. That’s an exciting thought to consider, isn’t it? To think that God willfully stepped out of His kingdom and came to earth is an amazing thing. He came from a place of perfection that we can only imagine and entered into all of the goriness of life on earth. And in such an odd way. You would think that if God was going to visit earth and experience life as a human He start at a place of honor, born into royalty or wealth or something like that. But no — He forsook all of that, choosing the poverty of a voiceless Jewish family in the midst of imperial occupation. He chose to not even be born in a legitimate setting. Who of us in their right mind would say, “Yes! I want to be born next to donkeys and cows and sheep! Lay me in their feeding trough to rest!” What a choice this was.

This makes the words of Paul in Philippians striking:

Jesus existed in the form of God but emptied Himself of this. He took on the form of a slave. He looked just like you and me. He shared in our nature.

This WORD becoming flesh, this God becoming man, this incarnation — it’s not about who He was but about who He was becoming.

Jesus was God throughout His time on earth; if this wasn’t so, we wouldn’t have the cross and complete liberation from the works of evil in the world. What mattered though wasn’t that He was still God but that He became man. This identification is an incredible thing. It’s something I don’t currently fully understand and don’t think I (or anybody for that matter) ever will, fully. We like big words like incarnation and kenosis and theosis and the like to refer to doctrines that attempt to describe at least some of what is going on but I’m pretty sure there will always be something of a mystery surrounding it all.

And it’s well and good to sit and wonder and awe at the mystery of it all; that’s something I readily admit to doing. Recently though an element of sober reality has found itself intermixed in my wonders and awes. The WORD becoming flesh — the WORD emptying Himself of Himself and taking on the form of me, well as I said it’s incredible. It gets sobering now though: This WORD made flesh in inviting me to live as He made me to, has invited me to enter this incarnational kenosis as well: To empty myself of myself and what He has made me, and take on the form of the other.

What does that mean? Forsaking Jesus? No. Jesus emptying Himself of God didn’t mean He was any less God. God didn’t forsake God, so to speak. It does mean stepping outside the bounds of life He’s ushered me into. Jesus chose to leave heaven and enter our muck and mire — theologically speaking: kenosis. Taking up Jesus, we enter into heaven (at least metaphorically speaking; I suppose we could have theological discussion about the technicalities of this) which I find to be a form of Theosis — the filling of ourselves with what Jesus chose to leave. We are called to emulate Jesus though so kenosis must follow. Jesus set that aside, came as a man, called people into what He was (giving glimpses of it all along the way) and loved so much that He chose to die so that we might live.

That kenosis hits home to me now in ways it never did before. Life was comparatively easy back in Oklahoma. It didn’t take much effort to empty myself and become something other because the reality was that the other was more like me than I might care to admit. Now though — it’s something different. Not to long ago I found myself sitting on a wooden bench in a filthy concrete room full of junk that the attached Shebeen (illegitimate bar) didn’t have use for with my wife, teammate and the drunk homeless guy who slept there. He proceeded to spill His guts about all of life, culminating in his desire and plan to hang himself. He drank day in and day out to forget this pain he carried with him everywhere but it was getting to the point where the bottle could no longer numb him to it. Sitting there that day I experience incarnation as I’d never experienced it before. It was in love-driven desire to be somewhere I knew I didn’t belong. There it was, reaching out to someone who had drunk too many 40s to count. It was the willingness to enter his world and feel and understand and see as he did.

In an academic sense, I knew that coming here and living incarnationally would involve wading into deep and dark problems in the lives of people — issues and feelings and thoughts I’d probably never known existed before — but it wasn’t anything more than that academic sense.

And, I wouldn’t have it any other way. You see the incarnation produces something incredible. For where kenosis happens theosis is soon to follow. Jesus came as man and presented something more (His kingdom), and many back then, and you and me now, entered and where filled with something more. So to for people like this drunk homeless man who wanted to give up on life in the worst possible way. That day about a month ago was incredibly sober. Today though His story is something different. He’d never had someone tell him that they loved him. And for it to be a white guy from America — that blew his mind. It made him stop and think. And when he found out why (Jesus in me, my wife and teammate) it made him reach out for something more. We did a lot of sharing and a lot of praying with him that afternoon and God filled his heart with a joy and with a peace he had never known before. We came back the next week to find him sober and smiling. The next week he was outside playing soccer with kids. Two weeks ago he excitedly shared of his new job — something he hasn’t had in quite some time. Last week he brought us a friend who had seen his transformation and wanted it in his own life.

This has been long and rambling and probably won’t make much sense to anyone but me; I just needed to get the words down and the thoughts out, to be mulled over and considered further.

There are a couple of things worth discussing at this juncture. The first is that it works. Our tendency in western cultures is to want to teach (or perhaps worse: preach at) people when in reality God wants to work in their hearts in a way that is free of our own junk. Allowing people to discover the Word of God on their own opens them to God in ways I honestly haven’t seen before. That doesn’t mean there is no need for evangelism — more often than not Bible studies start up from a good old fashioned telling of the Gospel (we like to fashion it as “God’s Story”) — but it’s never the endpoint of discipleship. It also doesn’t mean there isn’t room for some good old fashioned preachin’ and teachin’ — we’ve had to do some of that too — but generally that’s something left for those that already believe. What it does mean is trusting in the Holy Spirit to lead and guide and to from this exercise restraint in our natural tendencies. A woman we met with just today told us how much she appreciated being able to discover God’s Word — how life-giving that was to her. She described it as this well of God’s love that bubbles up within her, and how, because of this well, when she comes to passages that talk about not stealing and not prostituting, it’s not something hard to comply with because the Holy Spirit is already working within her. And that’s what we are praying for all of the people. And that is what we are beginning to see, particularly with those truly hungry to know Christ.

The second thing I thought worth highlighting is that sometimes are tendency is to over-spiritualize things. This is often decidedly not helpful. The last DBS post I did was about prayer time and I think our tendency to over-spiritualize really comes out in it. As I (hopefully) mentioned, it’s designed to be a low impact prayer time that gets even those people not yet comfortable with the idea of talking with God involved. They don’t even have to pray — it starts simply with talking about what we are thankful for and talking about the needs in our life. The actual act of praying can come later, as people are drawn closer to God through the studying His Word. And for those that have little to know exposure to “church” and the like, this is what happens. There are many people though that are or have been involved in heavily religious cultures and they know Christianese as well as most Americans. And you ask what they are thankful for and its a wordy, religious-y response that doesn’t mean a whole lot. And you ask about their greatest need and it’s similar — wordy, religious-y and devoid of much meaning. And what’s worse, because we are doing Bible studies so often we facilitators and evangelists find ourselves doing the same thing. Unfortunately it does little to build community — we can’t be the answer to anyone’s prayer if the prayer is somewhat impossible to understand in the first place. It also can be discouraging for times of praise — how do you praise that which you can only barely abstractly describe with words that, when it comes down to it, tend to be rather vacuous?

Thinking on that convicted me of my own “taking the easy way out”. I started thinking of this particularly issue about a month ago and because of it, have been trying to tangibly express my thanksgiving to God — be it for the weather, something specific He has done in my life or the lives of those I know, or some particular trait of His that is especially moving on a given day. And for the needs I have, I’ve been trying to take serious stock at where my heart is at any given time and being honest for those needs. And I can’t say specifically how it’s impacted any of the Bible studies but honestly I believe a realness, and honesty, draws people closer together. Being honest narrows the distance between us and them (if we are real with them, they become us, after all). It’s something I want the friends we are making to be able to do in their communities and something I’d recommend for everyone doing this and similar forms of outreach.

We always start Discovery Bible Studies with prayer time (or at least a time designated for prayer-like activities). For one thing, it helps focus peoples attentions around Jesus (if they are praying) and opens their hearts to the community (if they are just speaking thanksgivings and needs). Also, a big part of what a Discover Bible Study is designed to do is seamlessly transform from a simple study to a simple church as people find themselves following Jesus, and if you want the DNA of prayer built into the church community, it’s necessary to start with it from the very beginning (even if very little “prayer” is happening).

The obvious question is how do you build this DNA into the community from day 1, especially if you are dealing with a group of people that have no concept of Jesus and prayer and talking to God? Forcing prayer is one option. It’s an option I’ve tried in fact but it doesn’t really produce fruit that is lasting — people are shy and nervous and unsure about talking to someone or something that they don’t even know.

So what’s a good way to do this? Just as in studying the Bible it’s best to have simple steps so that it is easily reproduced. There are three that we do to create an atmosphere of prayer within the DBS.

1. Share what you are thankful for. We start by getting everyone into an attitude of thanksgiving. Even if life is as hard as it could possibly be, everyone generally has something that they can give thanks for — be it friends and family, the beautiful, life or some unexpected blessing. By sharing these we actively engage in putting our hearts in a mode of giving thanks and, when the group is praying, we have a pool of items to praise God for.

2. Share what your greatest need is. Whereas thanksgiving is probably the best place to start, intercession is also a needed component of prayer. Building in a reliance on God and recognition that He is the source of all that we are early on sets a very good precedent. It also gives God an opportunity to radically show up and show Himself as real (in line with 1 Corinthians 2:4) through answered prayer. For example, I had the honor of baptizing a husband and wife on Easter that we have been doing a DBS with for about 2 months. On our first meeting, the wife had us pray during this time for her baby who was covered some scaly skin disease that did not look pleasant at all; God showed up and instantly started healing the child (by the next day the scaly skin was normal again). And that opened them up to a more in depth conversation about Jesus that led to them making the decisions that they have made.

3. Ask if anyone present can meet any of the needs expressed. God often moves miraculously; often too He uses us to be the answer to other peoples prayers. And if community is a value, we should be actively seeking to meet those needs expressed. As an example, someone we met in a DBS expressed the need of not knowing how to manage money. Because of that, we volunteered to spend some extended time with him sharing tip and tricks to manage your money (basically a modified envelope method) which he found really empowering and helpful.

Even if everyone isn’t praying on the first DBS, you as participant or facilitator can. If no one can meet the needs expressed, you can offer to lift those people up. After the fact you can meet with people to pray for them. As people grow closer to God and want to pray you are there to teach them and help see them grow in this (as well as Bible study).

Hopefully this gives a quick rundown on prayer and how it is incorporated into DBSs.

In my last Discovery Bible Study (DBS) post I talked about the role of the facilitating and how they lead not in the traditional sense but in inspiring and encouraging everyone to participate. In this post I want to begin to get into the meat of the DBS program.

We’ll do this by looking at the steps for Bible study first. There are other elements to the meeting besides just Bible study but this is what I’m going to focus on this post. The DBS is designed to be a very simple (and therefore reproducible) method that anyone can follow regardless of schooling and background. It’s designed in such a way that you don’t actually need a physical Bible. It would work just as well with an audio copy. It’s also not dependent on a trained scholar of some type. A group could be made up wholly of pre-Christians and still get very deep into the WORD of God. And this is what I personally like so much about it — it takes people quite deep into the Bible. A superficial overview this most certainly isn’t. Substance isn’t at any level sacrificed for simplicity (and I think the substance in these studies is often much more challenging than the substance I’ve experienced in churches in the states). There are 5 simple steps that we follow when we do this with people in the townships:

1. Reading the WORD.

The very first thing we do is read the Bible out loud. Often we read it more than once so that it everyone clearly hears. Sometimes we have everyone read it out loud. Reading out loud helps the words to sink into the reader and repetition makes it easier to remember for the hearers as well. And, when you take the other 4 steps into account, people often have read or heard the passage out loud 6 or 7 times. This makes it much more likely to produce lasting memory.

2. Everyone retells the passage in their own words.

The first step gets people to digest the WORD of God and this step insures comprehension. If someone can retell the passage clearly in their own words, you can bet they have at least a basic understanding of it. This is something to have everyone in the group do — it’s another opportunity to rehear the word and meaning is fleshed out as everyone verbalizes it in their own words (although a retelling and not a meaning is what we are go for here — meaning will be discussed as a group in a later step). If you are able to put it into your own words you are also more likely to remember it and, for accountability purposes when you ask people to tell someone about the passage, they can do it anywhere they are at regardless of if they have a Bible on hand. In “closed” situations where Bibles are scarce this is also very important for people as it helps equip them to be able to recreate the Bible on their own.

3. As the passage is being retold, asks the group if people are missing anything.

This step is done hand in hand with #2 as people retell. Putting the retellings to the test of the group insures accuracy and that people are drawing a right understanding. It also gives another opportunity for the WORD to be heard as people go back to the text to explain what others might be missing.

4. Break the passage into chunks and look at the specific meaning.

This is the step that dives us into the meaning. The facilitator breaks whatever passage is read into small chunks and the group discusses the meaning of each. The chunk could be a verse, a phrase, a sentence or a paragraph — essentially anything that’s smaller than the passage itself and gives you ample room to talk about all the different meanings within the text. Generally a phrase or a sentence works best but you might have to do more than that depending on time. For a group getting started, they might not know where to begin with discussing meaning so a few questions that I have found helpful are:

• What does this phrase tell us about God?
• What does this phrase tell us about man?
• What is God asking us to do or obey in this phrase?

There could be many other leading questions as well that gets the group to dive in and discuss.

Here it is very important for the facilitator to keep people on task. It is in this step of the process that you want to make sure that not one person is dominating the discussion or completely checking out of it. Also it is very, very important to keep people in the passage at hand, allowing no outside wandering. For non-Christians cross referencing and other such things aren’t something they know about so this generally isn’t an issue but when you deal with people that have some exposure to Christian culture they might try to wander all over the place introducing all sorts of confusion. It’s important to let the text at hand speak for itself. If anyone at anytime tries to say something thats not in the passage read, ask them where in the passage it is and if they can’t show you remind everyone that the focus is just the passage read. As Bible studies become churches, they can begin to compare and do broader comparative studies as they become equipped to deal with such things.

5. The obedience step.

Step 5 is really important. It’s in this step that we let the WORD of God sink from our heads into our hearts. When we don’t just hear it but actively choose to obey it — that’s when it changes us. And so, we ask everyone to be silent and think of all that we talked about throughout the DBS. We ask them to think specifically about one thing that God is highlighting to them that they can be faithful in obeying. We generally give them a minute or two to think about this and then everyone shares that one thing with everyone else. If everyone shares, there is accountability — they can check up on you throughout the next week or at the next meeting. Responses can be varied and that’s ok. What is important is that people are hearing from God through the Word and putting it into practice in their lives. One of our teachers told us of a Bible study he was in where the passage was Genesis 1. One guy mentioned how convicted he was that his horses where God creation and that he was exercising poor stewardship by beating them while other people could mention completely different things.

Choosing Passages

It may not be apparent from these steps but this is a long process. A selection of 10 verses could easily take you an hour or more to get through. As such, it’s generally best to select passages that are 10 verses or less. They should contextually go together (ie, you shouldn’t rip verses out of their context). If you need to go through a longer passage, it can span a week or more and that’s ok.

For groups of non-Christians (or people whose spiritual state we are unsure of) we tend to sequentially go through what we like to call God’s story: Creation, Rebellion, Sacrifice, Return, Commission. We also have a longer list of passages that takes them through the Old and New Testament that culminates in presenting a decision to chase after Jesus (it takes 20ish weeks to get through though — something that’s beyond our scope currently). As groups are baptized and become churches there can be a little more freedom in choosing passages and letting them discover church life and the Christian life as the dive in but we have lists that will take them through this as well.

One of the nice things about this process is that people can do it on their own. It’s actually a quite challenging Bible study tool and one that’d I recommend everyone give a try sometime. Obviously there will be differences if you are doing it by yourself (writing a retelling instead of verbalizing it for example) but its worth it.

I’ll have more on DBS’s soon.

I’ve written at quite some lengths about the small Bible studies we are starting and encouraging in our outreach time but have yet to spend much time actually describing what that looks like. I keep promising it and so this will be the first (of likely many) post to tackle that subject.

I’ll preference this by saying this method is called “Discovery Bible Study” for a reason: it’s designed to be simple enough for anyone to lead and deep enough that it draws non-believers into obedience to God. It’s actually simple enough that even a nonbeliever can lead it (and in CPM situations this is more often than not the case).

And it’s the role of the leader that I think deserves first mention.

The Facilitator

In truth — facilitator is a much better term then leader. They aren’t leading in any traditional sense; rather their role begins and ends with providing direction in keeping the conversation going. There are three things in particular that are worth mentioning.

1. The facilitator is not there to preach or teach in any way, shape or form. They just facilitate conversation. Pushing their opinion to the exclusion of other opinions or dominating the discussion is definitely out of the question. Participation is definitely acceptable (and encouraged!) but their voice counts the same as all the others.

2. The facilitator is there to insure that participants stick to the passage at hand. The idea with Discovery Bible Study is that participants are generally nonbelievers and have little to know exposure to Jesus so this is generally not an issue. It starts them out recognize the authority of scripture and it’s importance. Where it becomes problematic is when you get Christians in that group (or people with nominal knowledge of the Bible). They “hyperlink” and bring in verse and such outside of the scope of the passage at hand. Sometimes they might relate but it often only succeeds in confusing someone who is just beginning to discover Jesus. Another goal with sticking to the passage at hand is that you teach good Bible study habits. From the beginning they learn the importance of studying complete passages and not (as all too often happens) ripping verses out of their context to (often) say something that the Bible actually doesn’t. And if this is done right, from the very first study you build into the group the DNA of obedience to God and His Word.

3. A good facilitator also keeps his eye out for over-talkers and under-talkers. Just as you don’t want any one person dominating the discussion, you also don’t want any voice being left out (or drowned out). The facilitator, when he sees this happening, can politely (yet abruptly) silence the conversation (*”That’s really a great thought. Juli what do you think.”) In the same way he can gently nudge those that aren’t talking to speak up and share their heart. A good bit of the meat of Bible study comes in the group interaction; if you don’t have this, it’s less likely that people will be impacted as they should be.

Church Planter As Facilitator?

Ideally, the church planter (US!) should not be the facilitator. The process (described in coming notes) is designed in such a way that the facilitator can learn along side everyone else. Being a nonbeliever (or not) doesn’t disqualify from this role as the group is not yet a church. Not only that, you want people from within the context you are ministering to feel empowered to do this themselves. Ultimately, they are the ones that will reach their culture better than we ever could. It’s good to get them started in such a way that they are empowered to do that from the get go.

In some circumstances, it might be for the church planter to facilitate. When that happens our role isn’t any different than above. Not only that, we have to pay special attention to the mandate NOT to preach or teach. As I said, it’s called discovery because people are discovering Jesus. It’s not about us preaching or teaching our opinions at them. This is particularly hard to do and is a reason for the church planter not to facilitate. Instead, though, we can ask lots of questions and get them thinking about scripture critically.

If we facilitate, we also have to deal with the hand off. We can’t lead forever; at some point local leadership must take over if the group is to survive. If this is done from the start, it never actually becomes a big issue.

Honestly though this is something we are still trying to work out. The rhythm I am finding myself in is facilitating the first meeting and then getting our key man (or woman) — whoever introduced us to the group — to facilitate from then on; my role then is to simply show up, help when necessary and encourage and mentor burgeoning leadership.

Look for part two soon, hopefully as early as tomorrow. It’ll go into further detail of the structure.

This week, instead of going into Masi on Sunday as we normally do, we went in on Saturday. There is a big bicycle race happening today — Sunday — (the Cape Argus race) and all of the roads in our vicinity are shut down because of it. So it mixed things up a little bit, but it was still an incredible day.

We had appointments scheduled for Sunday, but we were thankfully able to move most of them to Saturday, and we started the day by going to the first. It was with whom we think is the most peaceful and spiritually hungry man we’ve met (who happens to be from Zimbabwe — that’s a common thread for some reason). We’ve visited his house twice before specifically for Bible Studies, and each time its grown with different friends and family from the immediate area.

This particular day, we actually had two meetings planned with him. The first was a money management session and the second a Bible study. He and his wife and another friend came to each this day and it was an incredibly fruitful time.

The money management seminar was basically a time to go over the fundamentals of having a budget, saving for the future and being empowered throughout. I taught them a simplified version of the method my wife and I use — a modified envelope schema. We started by talking about recurring expenses — what we spend money on weekly and monthly — and having a category to classify every single expense we make. We discussed dividing his paycheck appropriately between the categories (making sure the “fixed” expenses like rent had enough and that more fluid categories like “food” had plenty as well). We taught them how to keep track of what to spend and the importance of making sure that everything — even little treats like ice cream — had a category from which they came. We also talked about the importance of saving a little, even if only R10 per paycheck, to prepare for the unforeseen expenses of the future, and that it was ok and good to make “special” categories so that they could get important items that might not fit elsewhere, like a new cooking set for the mama.

We take doing things like this for granted but it was totally mind blowing for this family. They had never even considered tracking what they spend. These concepts were all completely new. And that’s how it is it seems in most, if not all, of the townships. They grow up in families that have no inclinations towards managing their money. As soon as some comes in, its blown on a whim on whatever comes to mind. Basic stewardship just isn’t something passed from generation to generation.

It was exciting to me to see them get excited about budgeting and taking ownership in their own financial stewardship. It was encouraging to see them empowered to think past immediate desires and take serious stock at the actual needs in their lives.

And this, as it is with all that we do, was a discipleship issue. We don’t live outside the grasp of our heavenly Father, nor should we budget and consider finances outside the realm of His touch. We were able to encourage them to look to God as their provider, that He cares for them even more than the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and that even if disaster might strike (as it has a knack for doing), we could still rest firmly in the comfort of His arms. It’s in the simple truths and the simple actions taken in response to them where we see transformation occur. And it’s exciting.

But our day didn’t end there, and that wasn’t even the most exciting part of our story with this family. After the money management seminar, we did a Bible Study. The past two Bible studies there, we’ve looked at intro passages to the Bible together; today we decided to start digging into God’s story of creation, rebellion, sacrifice, repentance and commission. Creation was our starting point (and all that we got to), specifically reading Genesis 1:24-28:

God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: cattle, creeping things, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” It was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the cattle according to their kinds, and all the creatures that creep along the ground according to their kinds. God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.”

It’s a pretty straightforward passage and lays out some keys of creation: God created us all, every animal and every person and saw that it was good, and that people are all created in His image. We thought this would be our primary topic of discussion but God had other plans. We went through the passage as we normally do (which I promise to write more about soon) but before we finished we had a couple of questions. First, our main man’s wife asked, “Male and Female were both made in His image — does that mean God is married and has a wife?” This led us to begin talking about the grand love story of Scripture — God’s quest for a wife, visualized as Israel, and Jesus’ eventual consummation of that in His people — the Church. We talked much more eloquently than that, and I believe were spirit led because of the next question, from the main man himself: “I want to be baptized — how do I make that happen?”

This question honestly took me by surprise — we were talking about creation and NOT Jesus and baptism. But the Spirit moves through His Word. We asked Him what led him to this decision and he said that from the passage he was just impacted by how powerful God is juxtaposed with how much He must love us. Finding this to be a good answer we steered the conversation towards Jesus specifically and then to baptism. I got to share my testimony intermixed with the Gospel and the what baptism meant — dieing to our old selves and being raised in the resurrection of Christ — and that there wasn’t any specific power in the act but that it was a public declaration, a stake in the ground, that your life now belonged to Jesus and not the world (it can be good, I think, in places with a high spiritual awareness to distinguish between an act like baptism and weird or powerful magical type things that witchdoctors do). Anyways — at every step of the conversation both he and his wife said, “Yes, this is what we believe and this is what we want!” I had the honor of leading them in a sinner’s prayer and when we finished, we all hugged and celebrated being a part of the same family. And — on April 4th (which is Resurrection Sunday) they will be baptized, if we can get them to Africa House! Regardless — the Kingdom of God is now one family bigger!

After leaving their place, our only other significant encounter for the day was an impromptu Bible study with these guys named Joseph, Courage and Blessing. I normally don’t name names but these names were too cool NOT to. They all seem hungry and are interested; but our schedules never mesh (we met them our first day in Masi as well). We studied the same passage of Genesis together, and it was good — I just don’t know if we’ll be able to followup. The upside of our encounters with them is that they know who Jesus is and go to a church that at some level respects the Bible (many of the churches here don’t). Our goal isn’t to draw people out of existing churches but to empower them to chase hard after Jesus, to love one another and reach out to their neighbors and our hope that we have been able to do that, with them, at some level.

Like I said before — it was a pretty incredible day. I expected my story to end here when I started writing last night. But it doesn’t. I never dream but I have twice in my life had dreams that I remember, to this day, that seem to be significant and from Jesus. Last night I had my third and it relates to the events of the day.

In my dream I met a lady from a township. It wasn’t someone I currently know and I don’t necessarily think that that’s important. What is is that we were able to encourage and empower her. She was struggling and had dreams but didn’t know how to pursue them. She really wanted to but didn’t believe that she could. Everyone was telling her that she was worthless and wouldn’t ever make anything of herself but we were able to speak the opposite into her life, beginning with the Gospel. As discipleship took its course, we were able to encourage her to step into those dreams of her heart and pursue them. This took the form of some sort of business she wanted to start and some sort of grant that was needed. We encouraged her to go to this place (it was ABSA, a local bank, in my dream) but this place never gave it to people like her (women from the township); it just wasn’t done, and from what people were told, would never be done. But she went confidently anyways and lo and behold, everything worked out perfectly and the business happened and her life was forever transformed in a big way. And that day we had a big party with her in Silver Palms (the place we are staying). It was a fun celebration but could have been better and Jesus was there and he walked over to a microwave and turned the power up as high as it could go, and then the party got really fun. And then I woke up.

And I remembered it (which never happens), felt like it was from the Lord (really, this is pretty much the case with any dream I remember vividly — the third time that I can recall) and felt like I know what it meant. First of all — discipleship is the beginning of relationship with people and it needs to be like that — firmly rooted in Jesus and the Gospel. He is the power of transformation in life and nothing less (hopefully we can all agree on this at the very least). Second of all — in our context and probably broadly when considering the world’s poor, there is a lot that has been spoken over people that they buy into that isn’t at all helpful — a lot of discouragement and a lot of things that keep them down. I was immediately reminded of our Zimbabwean friends and how budgeting was so foreign to them and so many people here because folks assume that they are always going to be bad with money and that they aren’t worth their time to even try and teach better life skills. Third of all — the ending. It’s important that we live out of a place of joy and praise and thanksgiving. We can’t forget that regardless of what it is, every good thing comes from the Lord, whatever it might be — food for our bellies, a sunset on the beach, a job or the blessing of a child. It all warrants our celebration and thanksgiving. To me, the ending is a reminder of that — that God is wanting to see us walk even more fully in a place of thanksgiving, not taking for granted any little thing that might come our way in life (something I’m keen on right now, living a life solely dependent on Him in a way that I never had before).

Anyways — I woke up encouraged and spurred onward by that dream. I was encouraged that Jesus is pleased with what we are doing — all of it — and that His desire really is for life transformation here on earth as it is in heaven. And I was spurred onward to see both more of that in the lives we meet in the townships (and elsewhere and our own) and much more thanksgiving and praise in our every day walks with Jesus.

And that brings us to the end of this past week in Masi — I hoped you enjoyed it!

I had another pretty incredible week in Masi. It’s amazing to witness, and be a part of, the move of God in a place. It is happening here — there is no doubt about it. Here’s a sampling of the highs and lows of the last three days:

Thursday

Thursdays currently are probably our busiest day. We always seem to have at least 3 meetings to get to. This week was no different — we started out with four meetings on our todo list. But this Thursday ended up being somewhat different — it was actually the day of answered prayer. The first was with the Zimbabwean group that officially started last week. As we were walking to their place we actually met two of the women. They were super excited to see us and even more glad that we were coming but weren’t actually able to meet. Lines got crossed (as is oft an issue here) and our contact into the group was out of town. But this was a good thing as it was an answer to prayer (he needed to get back home to Zim to attend a funeral). That wasn’t the only answered prayer of the group though: one man that we had prayed to get a job actually got a job after we prayed (which is a really significant thing) and another woman whom we had prayed for to have a safe and easy birth had just that.

Since we didn’t need to have a full blown Bible study with them, we used our newfound time to visit the other existing Zimbabwean house church. We found out that one of their prayers had been answered to (the one for safe birth). After briefly sharing with them, we headed to the house with the white picket fence (from the treasure hunt story I told last week). The man we met was there, as where 4 friends that he invited. We all had Bible study and it was a significant time — one of the women was touched enough that she broke down and shared her heart with all of us and we had a chance to pray for her and her husband. It was certainly one of those “Holy Spirit” moments.

After this, we took some time, as a group, to specifically lift up Masi in prayer. This was also a significant time as God gave me a verse to specifically pray into and for Masi (and for those reading this note, you can pray this as well): Isaiah 45:8 which says, “O Sky! Rain down from above! Let the clouds send down showers of deliverance! Let the earth absorb so that salvation may grow and deliverance may sprout up along with it. I, the Lord, create it.”

Friday

It’d be easy to label Friday as a down day, but God was still on the move, and it was good because of that. Our first appointment was with someone spiritual intrigued but timid. They weren’t willing or interested in gathering friends and family and where a bit shy to talk. But, as we shared with him, he started to completely open up. The passage God put on my heart was exactly what he was needing to hear (the story of the persistent widow) and while he came to the Bible study with a heart hardened towards prayer, he left wanting to continue to press into God. This, at the very least was encouraging, and we are going to follow up with him but as of now it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to plant anything else with him.

We then wandered around and “hunted” on the streets. It went fairly but their wasn’t anything spectacular to write about. We did come awfully close to getting a contact high (one of the houses we were invited into reeked of mary jane) but thankfully didn’t stay long enough for this to be an issue. We also had a meeting with a woman that we keep crossing paths with but who appears to be a grade A distractor — she is wanting all the prayer she can get, but when it comes to Bible study and putting into practice the Word of God, she seems totally uninterested. It’s a shame, but we are going to try one more time with her (she was drunk on this day).

I’m actually going to write and tell the story of Saturday in a separate blog post because it is incredibly powerful and special. I’ll try and do this tomorrow after I sleep so get excited for it!

We spent several hours in Masi again on Sunday. I normally might wait a few days before sharing about it, and lump a week together, but our time was just so encouraging I feel like it needs to be shared in its own posting.

We started off by going to the Zimbabwean Bible study that started last Sunday. At the end of our first Bible study, we asked the man that gathered the group if he would be willing to lead this week and he was (which is a great sign for longevity!). We got there yesterday and he’d gathered people again (and this time some additional people: also a good sign). He then got us started through praying together. He’d also already picked out a passage of scripture to look at and led us in that study, remembering almost all of the steps perfectly. It was just a really encouraging time. All three of us “missionaries” that were there agreed that there is great potential in this group and particularly their leader. Here are a just few reasons we are thinking this:

• Their leader gets it. He’s new to Jesus and the Bible and praying and such but he is picking it up fast. And not only that he is hungry for it, wanting to gobble up as much as possible.

• Mission is on their mind. Their leader said, in his concluding thoughts (something we all go around and do), that it wasn’t enough to just learn these things about God but that we are to share them with others. That really made me smile and we got to encourage him in this: “Yes! That is something we are to do with anyone and everyone we meet! Don’t hesitate to take what God is teaching you today and share it with any that you meet!”

• God is answering prayer in their midst. This has taken two forms so far: (a) last week we prayed for a baby that was their, probably less than 6 months old, who was covered from head to toe and an extremely bad rash. His skin literally looked scaly. But as soon as we got to the Bible study this past Sunday, the first thing they did was show us the baby who was completely healed and tell us how thankful they were to Jesus because as soon as we all got done praying for him the rash started disappearing. (b) Their leader mentioned as his greatest need knowledge in how to manage money because it seemed as soon as it came in it disappeared on things. After talking it over with my coach, we volunteered to teach him and any of his friends next week some simple budgeting techniques that could hopefully over time begin to improve his family’s quality of life.

• God is springing up within them a desire for His word and presence. They really want it, and as much of it as they can get.

Anyways — that Bible study, “pre-house church”, was super encouraging and well on its way to becoming a house church and a bright shining light on a hilltop for the rest of Masi to see.

Our next appointment didn’t show, which was disappointing but happens often enough. We did get to pray for a woman struggling with alcohol and tobacco addictions. We spent quite some time praying for release from those bonds in her life. She cried and felt like God touched her life in that time and we are hoping that it is so. She’s one that we’ll try to follow up with at some point in time, if we get a chance.

Our next appointment was our last for the day. It was with another Zimbabwean who left one previously established house church to start another (this is the kind of growth exciting to see). It was small this Sunday but good. There was also two common threads that tied this one to the first one of the day. (a) It’s leader also said that his greatest need was for understanding in managing his money (we invited him to the little class) and (b) a healing was confirmed. You might remember that on our first day in Masi we prayed for a man who had a neck injury and hadn’t been able to move his neck since November and hadn’t slept well because of it. He was at this Bible study and said that ever since we prayed he could move his neck again freely, without pain, and that that night was the first time he’d slept well in about 3 months (and he’d slept well ever since). He spent a good chunk of his talking time in the Bible study praising Jesus (which is encouraging to hear). We have hopes for this group, just as with the first, and our praying that it grows and will be nurtured by Jesus and His Word and Spirit.

So — that was my Sunday in Masi. Encouraging and exciting. The Lord is moving and I am so blessed to be a part of it. For all those praying and supporting, I hope you are blessed by these stories as well. And for everybody reading, I hope you are encouraged by the incredible God we serve.

I’ve got more stories to tell about outreach — they never seem to stop! We’ve had three days of it since my last note, last Sunday and Thursday and Friday.

Sunday

Sunday started with a trip to Darlington’s house. We were kind of surprised (but shouldn’t have been!) to find him waiting for us. When we got to his place, he immediately gathered his friends and family that lived around the immediate vicinity and brought them to us. In all — there were about 8 of us (which is an excellent starting point). We went through the process for having a simple Bible study, starting with prayer and then reading the text and it was quite a blessed time. When we finished a couple of really neat things happened that we should be praying about:

1. One of the guys there said that he had never considered reading the Bible before but now he was going to immediately track one down and get it and start to read (we plan on helping with this if he needs it). He definitely had a hunger for the Word of God that you really are encouraged to see.

2. One of the ladies told us that she had never prayed — had never wanted to — before we came and now she wanted to start praying to God every day. That’s quite the change and will hopefully radically change her life and she learns and discovers more about who God is.

If I didn’t say this already, I meant to: we were really encouraged by our time. Darlington even agreed to lead this coming week instead of me (breaking dependency on foreigners is a key to continued existence).

The rest of the day was spent hunting for other people. We were able to pray and talk with quite a few but that really was our power encounter for the day.

Thursday

Thursday was different for a couple of different reasons.

1. Munya, Lucas and I went into Masi an hour early and

2. I drove into Masi for the first time by myself. And I should mention that this was my first time driving anywhere in Africa further than several hundred yards. And my first time driving a stick further than several hundred yards. And that driving in Masi is insane (due to the flood of people and vehicles in the road).

Anyways, we went into Masi early to do a Bible Study early enough in the day that the women in attendance would have plenty of time to make dinner for their husbands. It was with a group of Zimbabweans and their were quite a few there (that all lived in the same complex, I think). We got their and discovered that it’d been a pretty rough week for our connector (his mom had just passed away) and so we led it using Psalm 62. It wasn’t a normal passage we use but it was what God laid on my heart and according to Munya (who is a “Zim” as he calls himself) was quite meaningful to the group. They all stayed engaged throughout and were incredibly interested in knowing God better. One lady in particular (our contact’s wife actually) even said that she was for the first time feeling compelled to seek God. That’s again, something incredibly encouraging to hear. We are likely going to try and get into Masi early on most Thursday to meet with this group.

After this, we went to another Bible Study we had scheduled. But the person of peace wasn’t home. We at first were discouraged but then we found out why she was gone: she had gotten a job! This was a total answer to prayer — she’d been without work for quite some time and asked us to pray about this the week before when we had first met her. God does work in mysterious ways beyond us. Our prayer now is that she recognizes the Lord’s provision and is even more open to His movement in her life, and that she’ll desire to be discipled and make disciples. We plan on following up again as soon as we get the chance.

Our last Bible study of the day didn’t pan out. We waited about a half hour and the guys never showed up. It’s discouraging, in one sense, when this happens but it kind of clues you in real fast on who is actually hungry and not hungry.

Friday

Friday was another crazy day. We started with taking Juli and Whitney to meet a group of teenage girls that my group had met the previous day. They seemed incredibly peaceful but we were all guys and thought it best that the girls pursue them. It was definitely a good thing. And so after dropping them off, Munya, Lucas and I went to the library in Masi to spend some time praying. We didn’t have any appointments for the day and wanted to spend it “hunting” for people. While praying for clues, Munya once again found his walking by and jumped up and started talking to him. It’s a guy that’s really interested in both having a Bible study with us and bringing his friends to it. Hopefully this will happen on Sunday. We went from there to another Zimbabwean house church (that has been around for some time) to encourage them (we felt kind of like Paul in this). They led and we joined and shared our hearts with them and it was an all around great time. It’s encouraging to see these things going on their own without the need for outsiders like ourselves.

We went from here to a meeting we had scheduled with a guy named Doctor. He wasn’t around but we found a group of three guys that wanted to know what we were doing, and upon telling them, asked us to do an impromptu study with them. We obliged (of course!) and as we were finishing the prayer time Doctor showed up and joined in too. It was a good test case Bible study — it contained people really hungry to know about God (2 of them), a gatekeeper that granted us access to the group (an older brother who isn’t all that interested) and Doctor who we really aren’t sure about. We are definitely coming back to meet the 2, and Doctor but we’ll just have to see what happens. The prayer is that reactions won’t be dependent on the action of the older brother as he’s already granted us access into their lives.

After this, it was time to call it a day…but the story doesn’t end! As we where praying early for clues, God gave me one — A white picket fence. As we walked back to meet the van taking us home, we passed a house with the white picket fence and a guy sitting outside. Being bold we stopped and told him what we were doing, that Jesus gave me a vision of his fence and that Jesus wanted him to know that He loved him and was singling him out today. He had no clue how to respond to this and kept saying, “I’m shocked! I’m amazed! I don’t know what to say.” We asked him if he knew who Jesus was and he replied that he had only heard people pray to Jesus but didn’t know anything other than that. He agreed to let me share though and share I did. When I got done he said, “I know that what you say is truth, and truth to be believed.” He said he wanted to know more and he is gathering (hopefully!) his friends and family to hear on Thursday. We got a chance to pray for him for healing (he’s been sick since November) so continue lifting him up as you read this, for the healing and that Jesus would use him to bring Kingdom change to the area he lives in.

And that brings me to the end of our last few days in Masi. Hopefully you can be encouraged by these stories. I know I am.