Dear Harvest,

I arrived safely home from Thailand on Tuesday night and am working through jet lag. It was a great trip and I’m so thankful for the opportunity to go. It was engaging in ways I expected it would be – and transformative in ways I didn’t.

I expected to meet many new friends and learn a great deal about frontline foreign missions – and the Lord definitely blessed this. I had many wonderful conversations with leaders and missionaries from all over the world. For instance, I had several lengthy talks with Greg Allen, the President of GSI (Global Serve International).  I found him to be a very kind, generous, courageous leader in missions. He and his wife started GSI after spending many years planting a church in Siberia. The goal of GSI is to see the Great Commission of Christ carried out by the church of Christ (not by mission agencies).  He is from Michigan and is more than willing to work with Harvest to help us learn how to send and support missionaries in a Biblical and wise way. I was deeply impressed with him and look forward to having him here in Grand Rapids so you can meet him as well.

What I didn’t expect was how moving an experience this would be.  Over the past week, as I watched all these frontline missionaries engaged in the cause of Christ, I was deeply stirred by several things: their youth, their choice and their love.    

Their youth:  I was struck by how young they are. My subconscious idea of a missionary was a couple in their late 40’s to mid-60’s: seasoned saints who were able to handle all the hardships of missionary life.  Most of the missionaries I met there are in their late 20’s and early 30’s. That’s because learning multiple languages is a young person’s game, and planting churches in unreached people groups is a decades-long enterprise so GSI rarely accepts anyone over 35. So, just picture a room full of young couples and singles with infants in arms and many young children. Those are the missionaries. They are remarkably young.

Their Choice: When these young people sign up with GSI (Global Serve International), they are choosing to spend the next 20 years far from family and the comforts of an American life. They are choosing to live in mosquito infested jungles, desolate deserts or frigid tundras.  They are choosing to bring their children to places where there are deadly snakes and dangerous diseases and no modern health care. They are choosing to live where there is no Christian witness, at all; where the perversion is blatant, the corruption is ubiquitous; where government authorities are against you and witch doctors pray for your harm.

They are choosing a life that involves real danger. This was the first conference I’ve ever attended that had a breakout session stressing, to 25-year-olds, the critical importance of having a will. It’s the first conference I’ve attended where there is training on what to do if you are imprisoned. Beatings, imprisonment, and death threats are real possibilities, and do happen.

These are normal young singles and young families. I talked with a lovely young CRC couple who graduated from Dordt just a few years ago. They grew up in Chicago and Sioux Falls, SD.  They now have 3 lovely preschoolers and a home address in Central Asia. I met a successful businessman from Bakersfield who gave it all up and brought his family to a remote, thoroughly Muslim island in Indonesia in order to plant a church. These very normal people are living extraordinary lives because they’ve committed themselves to the greatest of all causes. I had a deep sense that I was walking among giants. I felt unworthy to be there.

Their love:  The love these missionaries had for the lost was palpable. We heard a testimony from one couple who, after spending 10 hard years learning the language and making inroads to an unreached people group, were suddenly arrested and told they had 3 days to leave the country. They wept as they spoke – not just because they lost 10 years of labor, but because they lost the opportunity to preach Christ and plant a church among people they had come to love. They were heartbroken.

I heard of a couple had to come home because the wife was stricken with cancer. She was given a terminal diagnosis with a year to live. They had two young daughters. Yet she insisted that her husband go back and continue the work as she went through chemotherapy.  In her mind, her condition was much less serious than that of their target group.  She just had cancer; they were living and dying without Christ. (Thankfully, that was 7 years ago, and she is still alive and still engaged in the gospel mission.)

These people are living a life that makes no sense unless hell is real, Jesus is glorious, and the gospel is true. They are burdened with a desire to see the nations brought to Christ and have chosen hardship and suffering in order to make that possible.  The command of Christ in the Great Commission is real and compelling for them.  The words of Paul Romans 10:14-15 make perfect sense to them:  “How will they believe of Him whom they’ve never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?” And so, they go.

Their worship:  One of the most moving parts of the conference was the worship time at the beginning of each day. These young people live in places where this is no church, and so they go years without attending a normal worship service. I heard from several of them that it’s the congregational singing they miss the most. There’s something about singing precious truths with fellow saints that is does something to the heart (think Psalm 42:1-4).

Their sacrifice fueled their worship. There was a poignant moment when the song leader invited the front half of the congregation to turn around and face the back half – and we sang to each other the chorus of “He Will Hold Me Fast”.  There were few dry eyes.  I saw one young mother singing with tears rolling down her face and fists clenched, viscerally clinging to the comfort of the words being sung. She wasn’t singing with such fervor just because she liked the song – but because, as a young mom raising little children far from home in an uncertain and unsafe world, she desperately needed to hear the promise: “He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. For my Savior loves me so, He will hold me fast.”

In short, as I watched and mingled with this crowd, I felt like I was in a very holy place. 

Three take-aways for me (at least for now).

1. I feel like we (West Michigan Reformed Christians) could benefit from a much clearer understanding of the mission of God and our place in it as we live our day-to-day life.  We have been called to be disciples of Christ and witnesses to Christ right here among the many lost people of West Michigan. It is critical that we see our lives in the context of the mission of God – or we will just drift into the deadly worldliness of consumeristic self-centeredness and experience the spiritual anemia of going through the motions of Christianity without a sense that our lives matter for eternal things. We long to live lives of significance for Christ and that is only found as we see our lives in the context of His cause. 
2. The great sacrifices these missionaries are making are not the only sacrifices that are pleasing to God. I see many saints at Harvest choosing hard things and embracing sacrifice for the cause of Christ in a variety of ways. I am so thankful for you! I think we should celebrate these God-glorifying choices a bit more. They are so pleasing to the Lord.
3. If these young missionaries are willing to endure so much for the cause of Christ, how can we not do everything we can to send and support them? They have made the Great Commission their life. They are spending themselves and their youth to see the Name of Jesus Christ known in places where there is no gospel witness to speak of.  And we can join them in that! There is a critical role for us to play.  Jesus commands us to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send forth reapers.”  We can be a sending and supporting church, happily engaged in the global mission right here from West Michigan. I am so eager to see Harvest participate much more intentionally and intimately in this great gospel venture. God is raising up young missionaries right in our congregation. I’m excited about learning how to be a church that send and supports them so that we may have the joy of participating in the harvest of the nations.

In conclusion, Thank you for your prayers.

Gratefully yours,

Pastor Dale