got fire?
Just yesterday a friend sent me a link to a recent article in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. I don’t often read the WSJ but when I saw the title of that article,
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| Jeff Romack |
“How Missionaries Lost their Chariots of Fire,” I knew I had to read it. You can check it out here, How Missionaries . . ., if you like.While I don’t agree with all that was said in that article, the author gets it right in the end when he writes that God’s mission involves both serving those in need and sharing the gospel but it is sharing the gospel that distinguishes our loving service to meet human need from the humanitarian aid given by many organizations. As the author points out, “Both are motivated by the desire to help others, but Christians are spurred by that Jesus thing.”At ServLife we are very much motivated by the “Jesus thing” and not ashamed of it. That Jesus gave his life for us and for the sake of the whole world is what makes us tick. ServLife is committed to planting communities of the Kingdom and to bringing hope to children-at-risk and the global poor. We are serving life by sharing the gospel and responding to human need. This is what lights our fire. How about you; got fire? Why not light your flame at ours?
Speaking of sharing the fire, did you know that Servlife has trained and now supports each month more than 120 indigenous church planters serving in India and Nepal?
One of the great new realities of the Christian movement is that the church is now a global reality. Linked to that, mission can no longer be characterized as the activity of western Christians going East (or South) to share the gospel. The church exists for God’s mission in the world and, these days, mission happens from everywhere to everywhere!
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| Nepali Church |
The ServLife church planters illustrate this point.While the Christian movement is a global reality to be celebrated there is another piece of that reality of which we must not lose sight. There are yet many peoples in many places where the gospel is not. ServLife is doing its part to address that situation. Our efforts to plant “communities of the Kingdom” are being done on the very frontiers of mission, the growing edge of Christian faith in the world. The indigenous church planters we support go to the hard places where the church has not yet taken root and where there are few, if any, believers. We are not laboring to plant a church just down the road from one of another kind. We are pioneers.
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| Go! . . . and make disciples. |
In pioneering situations, by definition, the material resources needed to evangelize in those places must come from outside those communities. In time, when a church has been planted, the local Christians will give of their own resources to reach out to their own. At the outset; however, workers and resources to support them must be sent from outside. This is where we need your help.Today, we have workers in 10 of Nepal’s 14 zones (states) and across seven (7) states in north India. We need your help to keep these men at work on the frontiers of mission and to train and send more.
Will you give dollars to support those who are giving their lives to share the gospel with the unreached in India and Nepal?
Each year, in Kathmandu (Nepal) and again in Raxaul (India), we call together all our workers on the field to celebrate all that God has done, is now doing and what He will do in the coming year. . .
These Leader’s & Church Planter’s Conferences are a big highlight for the people that have been doing the difficult work of sowing and reaping all year long. Here they receive a little bit of teaching and a great deal of encouragement. It’s not easy being on the frontiers of faith without others close at hand to offer support but that is often the situation they must endure. By the close of our time together everyone is ready to go back to the harvest fields with renewed strength and vision.
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| Previous year’s conference in Raxaul |
To call together our church planters from across India and Nepal takes financial resources for travel and food that our workers (124 of them!) do not have and for which we must all stand together in faith trusting God to provide. That provision comes when God’s people step up to contribute what they have to give to the cause of taking the gospel to the frontiers.
We are asking all of our friends to simply pray and ask if they are to give to this need. And, by the way, you’re welcome to join us for this time, too! Thank you for letting us share what is happening in the world through ServLife . . .together with you!
help fan our flame into fire . . .