Tag Archives: missionary movement

Are You Qualified?

Posted by harleyandmakara on


Do you know how to take orders from someone more experienced than you? Even when he’s a prideful jerk? Do you know how to give orders to someone with less experience than you without being a prideful jerk? Do you know how to learn something new and immediately put it into practice? Do you know how to teach someone to do the same?

Do you know how to do two or three jobs at the same time without compromising quality? Do you know how to use the least amount of resources while still meeting the requirements of the job? Do you know how to delegate work while still keeping yourself active? Do you know how to gain the trust of those who are giving you money because they can see you’re not wasteful and stupid with their money? Are you truthful, or do you make up numbers and stories to make yourself look good?

Are you able to explain yourself to your team so that they know what you expect of them and aren’t second guessing themselves because you did such a piss-poor job of clearly explaining what you want done? Do you listen well? Do you ask questions so that you are not misunderstanding what’s being told to you? Are you prompt in answering emails?

Do you want me to stop asking questions?

Does your work shine with the glory of God? Is your work straight and level? Can you step back after you’ve finished a job and feel satisfied that there is nothing more you could do to make it better? Does it bother you when you can’t answer yes to the last question?

Can you swing a hammer? Use a drill? Fix bad plumbing? Change a tire? Can you change the ballast in a florescent light? Can you catch rats? Can you make a budget that really works? Do you know how to use a spreadsheet program? Can you build your own website?

Do you laugh at death while standing at the top of a 30′ extension ladder on a windy day? Do you understand that the little line I put behind 30 in the last question means “foot”? Do you think it’s cool when you bleed? Do you have to buy the best and most expensive tools because the cheap versions can’t handle your rough use of them? Do you have what it takes to put a sick dying puppy out of its misery?

Do you love Jesus over all else? Do you trust Jesus over all else? Do you feel sorrow when you can’t answer yes to the last two questions? Do you love your wife? Your kids? Would you be willing to give up your life’s work if it was destroying your family? Do you consider looking at porn the same as cheating on your wife?

Are you okay with using a bathroom that’s nothing more than a hole in the ground in a small room made with rubber walls with a ceiling only 5 feet tall and no locking door?

Do you want me to go on?

Do you want to be a missionary in Cambodia?

Answering 7 Common Objections to Long-Term Missions

Posted by harleyandmakara on


I came across a good article today. Some Christians today are opposed to long-term western missionaries. This article speaks to that opinion.

Answering 7 Common Objections to Long-Term Missions
by Ben Stevens

During almost 500 meetings I set up to raise support for service in Germany, I glimpsed a snapshot of current evangelical sentiment towards long-term, cross-cultural ministry. Many exciting things are happening today in the evangelical world, whether in short-term ministry, church planting, or expanding our social consciousness. Yet I cannot escape the conclusion that a major change in the tides has come to the evangelical world regarding missions. Time and time again I encountered intelligent people, both laymen and pastors, who argued passionately that long-term, cross-cultural work is “no longer the way God does things.”

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Discipling the Nations

Posted by harleyandmakara on

source: sigoya.com

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…~Matthew 28:19 (NKJV)

“The highly individualistic nature of contemporary Western culture has led to the interpretation of this passage as though it said ‘Make some disciples in each nation.’ No doubt this meaning can be validly deduced, but it does not represent the meaning of the words. According to the words of the great commission which we have, the task of the disciples of Christ is to disciple the nations, to make the nations disciples.”[1]

“Nationality implies shared experiences and relationships, specific ways of doing things.”[2]

I’ve always been fascinated at how whole societies of individual people take on a personality as though it was just one individual. For example, Canada, as a whole, has a “personality” that is very distinct from the USA, or any other country. Millions of people, who live together, share the same experiences, think the same way, act the same way, have the same history—it’s no wonder that when we take a big step back, and look at the whole nation, we see what looks to be one individual.

This is just the way it is. When we are all together we start thinking and acting the same way. This is why God did what He did at the tower of Babel. And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”~Genesis 11:6-7 (NKJV)

It was really an act of mercy for God to scatter those people. Their disobedience against God corrupted the whole, because they were all together. If God would have allowed that situation to continue, things would have gotten so bad that He would have had to kill them all, like in the flood, or at Sodom and Gomorrah. But by scattering them He was able to separate a special people for Himself to do His saving work in the world, which is what He did with Israel.

In today’s world we are once again becoming a unified society. There doesn’t even have to be a “one world” government, we are being unified through a “one world” economy, a “one world” media, a “one world” everything. Perhaps Jesus will return when our world, once again, becomes like it was before the flood, or like it was at the tower of Babel: unified against God.

So, as a missionary in Cambodia, when I think about this fact about groups of individuals acting as one, do I want to think only of leading some individuals to Jesus, and then just hiding out in a small little church for the next 30 years?

Or do I need to see the bigger picture, and see Cambodia as one: one nation, one “person” who is called to be a disciple of Christ?

If I want the latter, then…

“(The word of God has to) pass into all those distinctive ways of thought, those networks of kinship, those special ways of doing things, that give the nation its commonality, its coherence, its identity. It has to travel through the shared mental and moral processes of a community, the way decisions are made in that community. Christ is to become actualized–to become flesh, as it were—as distinctively, and may I say it, as appropriately–as when He lived as a Palestinian Jew in the early first century.”[3]

I pray that the Holy Spirit takes this nation of Cambodia and fully penetrates it with the whole message and power of the Gospel.

[1] The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Culture and Conversion in Christian History by Andrew F Walls
[2] ibid.
[3] ibid.

Click here to read our January 2012 missions newsletter.