American go home... but leave your money behind

We have all probably read the articles and books written about rejection of the American. Any of us who have lived overseas for any length of time have certainly seen this sentiment. This isn't a post about foreign policy or sociocultural domination. No, this post arises out of a conversation that my wife recently had with a believer on our trip back home. As she was visiting with a dear friend, our friend M commented that she wished that US volunteers would stay away.

There is another local church that has been utilizing hundreds of volunteers each year to "build" the Kingdom. They have built an incredible compound and are currently building a church building that will hold several hundred people, when the membership is only a couple dozen. M is one of the members of this church and she commented that while they are well meaning volunteers, they are causing problems within their small church. The amount of foreign "investment" that has flowed into this little congregation is probably now well over a hundred thousand dollars.

She said that when the volunteers are present, hundreds of people will come to the activities to receive the free stuff that is brought but that when the volunteers leave, so do the people. She said that she is frustrated that their church has not made any decisions but that everything is decided for them.

I wish that I could say that M was the first person I have heard make a comment like this. Often I will hear, American stay home, just send us the money. In M's case, it was more just let us do what we need to do. We can do it without the money and without the "volunteers". It isn't always expressed vocally, sometimes it is said with actions instead of words.

When are we going to learn that God is the ultimate owner of everything.

God has placed resources in the harvest. Why is our temptation so often to look somewhere other than the harvest for resources?

When we introduce outside resources to the equation, most certainly we introduce control. We introduce our influence, for better or for worse. Most of the time, outside resources send the message to the unbelieving world that the main reason most of those "Christians" are part of the church is because they are getting dollars for being there. Too often, the testimony of the church is not one of dependency upon God but instead, dependency upon the American.

Homecoming and reproducibility

I recently had the privilege to take a short vacation back to where our family began our missionary work. A place where I made lots of mistakes but also a place where I learned a great deal. A place where we tried many things and finally saw some results. As I went back to visit, I did not know what to expect. We have maintained contact the best we could but considering none of them have email and phone service is... well, unreliable, it hasn't been as much as I had hoped. This is the story of our trip...

We arrived and had a wonderful time visiting with old friends. We were excited to see how God had blessed the small group of believers that we had worked with. At times, their journey has been frustrating but God did provide workers from the harvest of believers. The church is growing rapidly. In the past few months they have baptized many new believers (over 30) and plan ocean baptisms 1-2 times per month. They have a vision for reproducing and reaching others locally and around the world!

All that the church has, they have done it. They built a small building that they meet in, they have started a new church (still developing) in a nearby barrio, they have identified four small towns where they want to start churches this year. In two of these locations, they already have new believers.

The pastor was one of the first young men to come to Christ in the area. How was he chosen? They decided that time had come that they needed a pastor. One of the ladies prayed that God would lead them to the right person, God told her that this young man should be the pastor. Soon after she received this message from God, the young man stepped up and said that God wanted him to be pastor. It was confirmed when the lady shared her story of prayer. Where are the resources? The harvest!

What does this have to do with reproducibility? None of the believers in this church have come as a result of quick and easy efforts. None of the believers came in a showing of Jesus film, a children's carnival, door to door evangelism, or a medical clinic. They came through building relationships and spending lots of time with them. God has provided us many in-roads into communities by just living amongst the people with whom we are working.

Now that there is no long-term ex-pat missionary presence in the area, what does the church have to do to be able to reproduce? Do they need children's carnivals to draw a crowd? Do they need medical clinics? Do they need saturation evangelism teams to come in? Do they need a video projector, generator, and sound system? The answer to all of these is NO. Since they did not have access to this previously, it is not seen as the only way of reaching people. None of them were reached using those methods. They just need to follow the model of reaching those that they know and identifying the man of peace where they are unknown.

That is all for now but I will put more up about my visit this week.