“Where is Home?”

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Deanna

“Where is home?” is often such a daunting question for our family, only slightly less than “Where are you from?”  This was recently brought to light again with the publishing of our most recent prayer letter, in which we apparently ran the risk of confusing our readers. That’s okay–it is just evidence that we are often confused ourselves.  Dual citenzenship does that to you sometimes.

Having been born in the States, the U.S.A. is truly our native home land.  It is the place where our children were all born (in the same hospital, no less.)  It is also the place where all of our extended family resides–every parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, sister, brother, niece, nephew, cousin–you get the idea.  It is the place we sometimes miss when special holidays roll around, and often where we long to visit more often than we really can.  That said, we have made Australia our home.  In all honesty, it was God who made this our home, and like many things God does, He doesn’t always give the specifics of “why?” or “how long?”  We’ve actually moved to Australia twice now–talk about confusing.  When we moved the first time, we came to stay for life or until God had finished with us here.  When He took us back to the States rather unexpectedly, we settled in for life in a new and different place there.  And while we bought a house there intending to stay, it never felt like home.  (We were from Florida, not NE Pennsylvania so it really wasn’t “home” despite the fact that it was the USA.  And while it was a beautiful place to live, we felt like strangers when everyone seemed to know or be related to everyone else around us.)  But, God didn’t choose to leave us there, but returned us to the land we had earnestly tried to make home before.  But, we own a house in PA now, that we couldn’t seem to sell before we left.  Because of that (not to mention a skyrocketed housing market in Australia), we may never be able to own a house here.  I guess this is evidence that a “house” does not a “home” make.

Another factor in our “where is home?” dilemma centers around our children.  Most missionary families return “home” from their “field of service” when their kids reach high school age.  On the surface, this is to help prepare them for tertiary education, but sometimes I wonder if there aren’t deeper reasons for this.  You see, it is usually during those high school and university years that young people start to meet other young people, and, well, you know where that eventually leads.  By moving our children back at the dating ages they are, we are adding yet another curve into an already curvy situation.  Questions run through the mind like, “What if they meet and marry an Australian–my grandkids will grow up here, too.” (not that that is a bad thing, but a point of wrestling in my heart and mind…)  That means that if God ever does take us back to the USA, I would be leaving important bits of myself and my family behind potentially.  Not only that, it may mean that our family will cease to be American and forfeit our rights to American Citizenship within a few generations!  How important is this to me?  I really don’t know.

What I do know is this–a little bit of “home” is where the heart is, and my heart is in two places.  I didn’t really choose either, but both were chosen for me–AND my family.  Truly this gives more weightiness to the Scripture that says we are “pilgrims and sojourners” here on this earth–Heaven is our REAL home.  So, if I seem confused, or if I have confused you in anyway, know that I am sure of where my real home is.  Are you?

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No, Virginia, not everyone is a missionary…

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Deanna

It seems in this day and age, there is much confusion regarding the definition of “missionary”.  This was recently brought to our attention once again when our young adult children returned from their weekly Bible study group having engaged in a discussion of this nature.  This particular interchange of ideas left our MKs feeling slightly agitated.  “How can they say that we are all missionaries when they are still living in the town they grew up in and we’ve had to move multiple times to multiple continents?,” or, “What about the call of God?”, and then the ever popular, “They just don’t get it!”  Sadly, the latter is usually the truth.

As we have travelled the globe training in multiple churches, we often run up against the well-intentioned misunderstanding that we ARE all missionaries.  Many are surprised to learn that the word missionary doesn’t even appear in the Bible and has therefore been oft ill-defined by well-meaning pastors who are challenging their congregations to evangelism.  These same pastors if asked if everyone is a pastor, their prompt and confident reply would be a hearty “No!”  It’s kind of ironic when you think about it.  (Having served along side my pastor husband for many years, there’s a reason for such defense–truly the work of pastoring is often quite challenging!)  Why are not all pastors?  For the same reason not all are missionaries.  If everyone is a pastor, then no one is a pastor–or a police officer, or a teacher, or a doctor, or a missionary–the list could go on.

Now you may be thinking, “So what–what difference does it make?  Doesn’t the Bible say we are to be His witnesses in all those different places?”  Herein lies the key to understanding.  The word God chose was not “missionary” but “witnesses”.  The word for witness in the Greek actually means “martyrs”, which doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as “missionary”.  The actual word that we get the concept (command) of missions is “apostle” which means “sent one”.  (NB:  please note there is a difference between the office of and spiritual gifting of apostleship–another area of confusion is some modern church circles–ah, but that’s fodder for another blog :)   If you note the listing of spiritual gifts in I Corinthians 12:28, missionary a.k.a. apostle (sent one) appears:  “And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues.” Another example can be found in Ephesians 4:11, which speaks of Jesus giving the gift of specifically gifted people to His Church: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers,” These are Holy Spirit given and placed giftings for carrying out the work of the ministry.  For those given the gift of apostleship, they are the ones the Church sends out as “missionaries”–people who are divinely gifted and sent by God for a specific and often life-long vocational task of spreading the Gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth (usually in a cross-cultural context).

To be a missionary is not a self-appointed task.  In Biblical times, the church was to recognise the calling on a person’s life and they were to commission them (give them authority) and send them out if the call of God was recognizeable on their lives.  It seems in this day and age with the understanding that “all are missionaries”, we’ve got that a bit back to front.  Case in point, I recently heard a young lady proclaim she would like to take a “missions trip” to Korea because they play soccer and “I’d like to visit there.”  We call this missionary tourism, and it has increasingly become a problem in the Western churches.  While on one hand these exposure trips can be good, far too often teams are ill-equipped and improperly prepared to do more good than harm in the 10-days they devote to Gospel outreach.  Real missions requires a life dedicated to learning another’s culture, language and building real relationships with the goal being sharing the faith–this takes time, and much sacrifice.  Short-term trips do have the benefit of missions exposure, but they cannot replace true missionaries.  Instead, they should bring a familiarity and awareness of the missionaries in the field to better help the church back home pray for and support their front-lines workers.

I do apologise if in reading this, it ruffles your proverbial feathers, but we are in need of greater understanding of missions in the church today.  I believe much of the confusion is partly responsible for why it is so hard for missionaries today to raise much needed support both in prayer and finance without it taking many years–years in which people they’ve been called to carry the Gospel to are dying and facing a Christless eternity.  Can I just end by saying once again that we HAVE ALL been called to be His witnesses.  That’s a here and now command, whether your spiritual gift is mercy or teaching, administration or missionary.  Do I say this because as a missionary I want special recognition or treatment or just have an axe to grind?  The short answer is “no”.  I learned a long time ago through our missionary process that “Man’s goings are of the Lord, how can a man then understand his own way?” (Prov. 20:24)  I will leave you with a quote from one of my all-time favourite missionary heros:

“God is God.  If He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service.  I will find rest nowhere but in His will, and that will is infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to….It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on.  It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package–our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses.”   Elisabeth Elliot, 1996 epilogue “Through Gates of Splendor”

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A Little Bit of Africa (Well, sort of…)

Posted on July 22, 2011 by Deanna

It started out as a small thing, as most things usually do. A well-loved bird feeder strategically hung outside my kitchen window which I keep filled with seed when the budget would allow. It had been awhile since I had filled it, as being summer and all, I figured the birds had plenty of other sources of sustenance. While most summers in Australia tend towards the dry side, this one had been particularly plentiful with rain. Rather than the usual crispy brown lawns, most were lush and green and in need of a mow–except those that had given up during the 12-year drought and had replaced sod with rocks or mulch or astroturf. Our yard was one that had been mulched at least a few years back by the owner, so when something green began appearing from the ground looking like it was meant to be there, it wasn’t hard to miss. It didn’t take long to realise that this sprout underneath my birdfeeder looked an aweful lot like corn. Now I have always been a bit of an experimental gardner–let’s throw some plants in the ground and see what happens–so I watched with anticipation to see what this stray seed would produce. Having grown up my formative years in farm country in Indiana, I know what corn looks like–and, well, this sure did look a LOT like corn. The only problem was that it stopped growing at about waist high and put out the strangest looking tassle I had ever seen. Then one evening, we had a young missionary couple over for dinner. They had been back in Australia after spending two years in Niger, W. Africa. As we talked of Africa over a meal, the conversation naturally went to African meals and crops and the like. We deal with a lot of missionaries in that region, so I knew about millet. What I didn’t realise (until my missionary friend connected the dots for me) is that millet is what we typically consider bird food in the West. Could it be? Was I accidentally growing millet in my Australian back yard? I’m not sure what curious people did prior to google, but a quick google search revealed the identity of my mystery plant–it WAS indeed millet. Mystery solved! While I was mildly disappointed that there would be no corn harvested this season (at least not at my house), there was a quiet feeling of connection with my African brothers and sisters. (I’m sure THEY would know just how to utilise this bountiful blessing, which only the birds seem interested in here in Australia–they think they’ve hit the proverbial jackpot, I’m sure.) The whole incident got me to thinking of so many God things. How a small amount of faith (incidentally, millet seeds look a lot like mustard seeds) can produce great things. How sometimes seeds fall on good soil and grow, and sometimes they don’t–and despite man’s intentionality in the effort, God can produce growth in unexpected places. How one seed (Jesus) can fall to the ground and die, producing many more seeds (His church). How those who go bearing precious seed (the Gospel) will come again rejoicing (with new believers)…. I could go on, but I think you get the point. Now everytime I look out my window, I’m prompted to pray for the seeds being sown in Africa by the faithful workers God sends out.

Luke 10:2 “Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.”

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The Severity of Severed Relationships

Posted on March 7, 2011 by Deanna

It’s interesting how a typo in an email can catch you off-guard and bring some things into focus with more clarity—all through a slip of the fingers on a keyboard somewhere halfway around the world. Being a mum to four accident-prone kids in an active lifestyle has led to plenty of opportunities to learn a bit about medicine. The latest escapades of my 20-year-old son provided yet another opportunity for concern and medical care. To hear him tell it, all he was doing was washing one—not a tray full—but one, single glass at work that just happened to shatter in his hand, and well, multiple doctors visits, creative “keep it dry so he can shower” devices, out-of-work-for-three-weeks (while job hunting, I might add), and a few emails traded with my hand-therapist sister in the States leaves me with mother-worries yet again. (Big kids, big problems vs. little kids, little problems typically) It was one of those emails traded with my expert-on-the-subject sister that caught me off guard. The difference of one letter made me stop reading, go back to re-read, and then contemplate what she was trying to get across to me in regards to this badly cut finger.

“It sounds like the tendon is severe to the tip…” followed a few lines later by “It is a BIG DEAL.”

“Big deal?”—seriously? Does he really need to be able to use the TIP of his finger?” Oh, that’s me in denial and trying to hide from the reality of one more hard thing to deal with. (sigh)

But apart from that, her typo got me thinking…is the word “severed” meaning separated, cut off…possibly related to the word “severe” meaning “really serious/important”? …..it got me to thinking about relationships. (yeah, I know, weird, huh?) When a relationship is severed it is a severe situation. God made us for relationship. Sadly, it’s the little things—the one measly glass breaking—that we often allow to sever things. Our relationship with God was that way, severed by sinful rebellion (no small thing, mind you!) Restoring that severed relationship was important enough for Him to send His only Son, Jesus, to mend things up and restore that relationship. And all He expects of us is to love Him & love each other. Loving Him is easier than loving each other a lot of the time, I fear. Yet God tells us to leave our “sacrifices” at the altar and go mend our relationships with our brother first before approaching His trone. I’d say God takes relationships pretty seriously.

So, yah, one typo leaving me to contemplate the severe nature when our relationships become severed. It leaves us with decreased ability to function to full capacity like a nicked tendon and a finger tip. How about you? What severed relationships do you need to work on mending?

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So you wanna be a missionary, huh?

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Deanna

Not everyone wants to be a missionary—I know I never did!  (And some days, I find myself wondering if I still do!)  Who would, really, considering all of those missionary “horror” stories about eating bugs, trekking through jungles, giant creepy crawlies, exotic diseases and almost certain death lurking around every corner!  (It’s funny because the really scary bits are more about packing luggage that’s not overweight and raising support funds!)

I remember when we were preparing to take our family of six across the ocean for the first time to begin our service as church planters in Australia.  It was early 2000, about the time Steve Irwin was wowing everyone with his amazing ability to wrestle killer crocodiles, and grabbing some of the most venomous snakes in the world by the tail.  Another well-known travel writer had released a book about the “Land Down Under” describing in full detail how Australia had some of the most deadly creatures on the planet.  One very concerned elderly lady in church came up to me one Sunday morning after the service and suggested we reconsider taking our four young children off to such a dangerous place.  At the time, I said what a lot of well-intentioned servants of the Most High God tend to say, “The safest place for them to be is in the center of God’s will.”  Apparently I had forgotten that Jesus certainly was in the center of God’s will and I wouldn’t exactly call a Roman crucifixion “safe”!  Oh, we are so cute when we are young!

The truth is life in cross-cultural ministry (a.k.a. “missionary”) is a challenging one.  After all, getting good at saying good-bye was never high on my list of goals for life.  Then there’s the whole issue of cross-cultural living where perfectly mature and functioning adults are reduced to feeling like children again when you can’t even remember which side of the car to get in on, or accidently order hundreds of pounds of lunchmeat at the grocery store because you’re clueless about the metric system.  But you learn to laugh at yourself and, if you’re like me, know that God needs humble servants anyway and that’s all part of the process.  (still working on the humble bit, by the way…)

But with challenges come great reward—and I’m not talking about the eternal kind (although, that’s in the picture, too.)  Rewards come in the way of growing as a person by doing stuff you never thought in a million years you’d be able to do.  Then there’s something to be said about witnessing the BIGness of our global God and experiencing a little bit of heaven on earth as you meet “every tribe, tongue and nation” loving and worshiping Him.  These things make the sacrifices of leaving home, family and the familiar pale in comparison.  (Don’t worry—I still miss you, mum!)

Maybe missionaries tend to only share the gross and scary bits because we want to freak everyone out and make you think we’re something special to keep the good stuff for ourselves?  (There must be some logical reason to feed complete unsuspecting strangers large helpings of Vegemite that would gag an Aussie!)  Truth is, serving the Lord anywhere is full of challenge and reward—doing it cross-culturally just adds a bit of adventure to the mix!   (ut-oh, now the secret’s out…but, we’re taking applications to serve with SIM if you’re feeling “brave”!)

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