“He’s not here. He’s not here. He’s not here.”  I was chatting this week with a former Muslim in his mid 20s. He  recounted a dream that had changed his life while a college student in the Middle East.

“I saw a man rise from the grave and three woman repeating ‘He’s not here’.” Then, responding to a newspaper ad for free New Testaments, my acquaintance received his own copy of the Word. After reading the accounts of the resurrection, he dropped the New Testament and kicked it onto the floor. “What? Is this the same as my dream? How could that be?” Picking it up again, he read the entire New Testament through in one sitting.

He dropped out of college because he just had to grapple with classic Muslim objection that the Bible had been corrupted. Spending time in the local library reading as many early Church sources as possible such as Tacitus, Clement, Augustine, and others, he came to the conviction that Jesus Christ had in fact risen from the dead.  Months passed and he came to pray to Jesus, “I may be blaspheming right now, but I want you to show me you are real”.

Long story short, he became an Anglican. Why? I asked. “In my country, there are Catholics and Orthodox but they’re too rigid. And there are Independent Charismatics, but they’re too free. There are Reformed pastors, but they can sometimes ultra-reformed. Anglicans have order, but there’s freedom, too. Anglicans don’t behave like a cult and they can recite ‘One, holy, Catholic church’ from the Creed and actually believe it.”

Had I just met my first ex-Muslim now Anglican?

I don’t know, but what I had just experienced was a witness to Jesus Christ from a Muslim context.  I had heard from his lips that Anglicanism offers a viable resource for new believers from Muslim backgrounds.

We’re entering Holy Week, Easter, and Easter Week and this conversation makes me realize that Jesus can and does reveal Himself today in dreams. And He also calls Muslims to count the cost of believing in the Resurrection, the Bible, the Creeds. And though there are many ways to be a follower of Christ, living as an Anglican can certainly be an authentic one whether you’re from a Muslim background or not. Perhaps this Easter-time is a good season to pray for the Risen Lord to reveal Himself in dreams to Muslims the world over?

With the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby

This past week I have been in London at the Anglican Communion’s outreach committee meeting, also known as the Evangelism and Church Growth Initiative. Our mission, empowered by Archbishop Welby (the new Archbishop of Canterbury), is to encourage evangelism across the 165+ countries of the Anglican Communion.  As a core group member, my responsibility is to encourage work in areas of the world where there is very little Christian presence, in “unreached” areas.

I left the meeting with a sense of hope. Alongside traditional mission areas of concern such as children, youth and discipleship, the group has a continued interest in the unreached as well. In addition, it was encouraging to meet Bishop Graham Cray who heads up Fresh Expressions, a new church planting initiative in the UK. We also made site visits to UK parishes that are engaged in innovative evangelism in their communities.

I have left the meeting with a sense that God is not finished with the Anglican Communion, despite all the recent controversies and troubles.  If God could use an ass to speak truth in the Old Testament (Numbers 22), then maybe He’s not done with this international, historic, diverse community called the Anglican Communion.

“You Westerners plan, strategize, and analyze. We Asians do. We act. Then we reflect and consider,” an Asian Bishop told me over coffee a couple years ago.

Well, there’s some truth in that. Our Asian brothers and sisters get out there and do evangelism, plant churches, baptize new believers. Just this week I heard of a Bhutanese pastor in the US apologize to a colleague (originally from Iran) that he had so few people ready for baptism when the Bishop comes in a few weeks. “Yes, I only have 25 adults for baptism” to which his colleague responded, “Oh, I don’t think the Bishop will mind. In fact, he’ll be quite happy to baptize 25 people.”

Whether Westerners fear failure, get paralyzed by analysis, or are lazy, I don’t know. Talk to your priest or pastor and ask if your church could plant a new congregation this year and see how he reacts. And whether our Asian brothers are merely impulsive, or courageous and zealous, again I don’t know. Only God reads their hearts, and ours.

One thing I do know is that Westerners need to listen. Paul Borthwick has done the global church a big favor writing his latest book Western Christians in Global Mission: What’s the Role of the North American Church? Listening to our non-western brothers and sisters is a topic he devotes an entire chapter to.  A few ideas resonated with me and, perhaps, they will with you, too.

Be a friend to a non-Western Christian  

Not much has changed since Bishop Azariah of India was famously quoted as telling the Edinburgh Missions Conference in 1910, “Give us friends.” He’d probably not think that “liking” someone on Facebook really equaled friendship. And he’d probably not consider a Western Christian doing his “thing” (speaking, training, financing, fixing problems, etc) equaled friendship either. Listening implies a person has something to learn from another person. Listening to a non-Western Christian friend may alert us to our blind spots, our shallowness, our self-preoccupation.

Learn from their suffering

When you shell out $3000 for a short term mission trip to Asia or Africa, it’s hard to realize your plane ticket may have cost more than the average pastor’s annual salary. And, therefore, it’s tough to imagine how a Westerner can even start to appreciate their hardships. One pastor we visited in Tanzania on a trip some years ago was blind and had five or six children. His church was a half-built mud block structure.. His parish was only accessible by walking miles down unpaved roads. His parishioners were poor. Our non-Western brothers may ask us, “Show us your scars, and then we’ll believe that you understand the same gospel that we’ve embraced.”  That’s a start.

Learn from their ministry context

Half-way through a five-hour worship service in Nigeria, the Bishop’s wife came up to me and asked if I was hungry. “Well”, I smiled, “perhaps…”. That was enough. She exited to the local market only to return with some goodies for this weaker Western brother! There must have been over one thousand people in the cathedral and yet she was thinking of me.

The Bishop launched forth in an emotional and energetic sermon. At one point, he placed his hand on top of his head and asked the entire cathedral congregation to follow. As he preached in the local language, I wasn’t sure what he said, but afterwards I asked why he placed his hand on his head. “Oh, we were asking the Holy Spirit to fill us and placing our hands on our heads is one way to do that for yourself”.

Nigeria is a complex place. Westerners come with their quick-fix, their latest and greatest, and fail to scratch the surface. I felt privileged to encounter a worship service where my physical and spiritual needs were attended to.

Listen up, will you! You might learn something! Yes, and I might too.

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“Why should I show up at church for an hour on Sunday and an hour on a Wednesday night?” a Muslim leader asked me in a Dallas mosque several years’ ago. In effect, he was asking why a Muslim should trade his experience of community and hospitality for what he perceived to be the Christian alternative.

The Muslim leader had a point. Why show up if that’s all Christian community and hospitality really amounts to? Other cultures seem to do a better job than North Americans. Other cultures often intuitively welcome a stranger in a foreign land.  So, what counts as authentic Christian hospitality today? I’d like to suggest three secrets both to Christians and to Muslims, and others, about the nature of a welcome Jesus-style. Well, perhaps they’re not secrets, but they are like hidden gems we’ve either forgotten or never encountered:

1. Sacramental
 Welcoming strangers is like a sacrament—a visible sign of an inward reality. The spiritual reality is that as Christians we were alienated from God, but in Christ we have been giving the ultimate welcome. In turn, we welcome strangers in our midst.   We also welcome in order to live out the future hope of all nations, tribes, and tongues. Somehow when we welcome strangers in Christian hospitality, Jesus is present.

2. Counter-cultural
Welcoming strangers is counter-cultural. It went against the grain for Christians in the first five centuries to ignore social conventions about race, class, and economics in order to show hospitality. Historians tell us it was hospitality that distinguished believers and defined the church as different from the rest of the world. And today not much has changed. Where Christians recognize the value of each person and go out of their way to show practical care for the stranger, the poor and the sick, that’s where you can find spiritual vitality.
3. Opportunistic
Welcoming strangers is opportunistic. That sounds negative, as if we are to take advantage of foreigners. But, that’s not what I mean. We have to go out of our way to seek out newcomers in our home town.  We have to see what opportunities exist in our own communities and then take advantage of them. Opportunities could exist at the grocery store, at the YMCA, through your business, at college. Equally, they could exist through Facebook, social networking sites, and other online venues.

Welcoming isn’t easy! You will have cultural clashes, misunderstandings, and find it exhausting.  If you’re trying to get something out it–an agenda like feeling needed, wanted, or to respected like some type of savior–then you’ll be disappointed. However, with faith in Christ, guidance by the Spirit, and the Father’s love, welcoming is an amazing experience.

“Mission? Oh, I didn’t know Anglicans were interested in mission,” a Vietnamese house church pastor once told me during a training conference in Thailand. His father had been imprisoned, and he faced threats as leader of an underground movement.

“Oh, yes, Anglicans are interested” was my meek reply. But it got me thinking. Why aren’t Anglicans known for mission? Are they more interested in candles and cassocks, prayer books and lectionaries? Or is their legacy more related to cutting-edge social justice issues than to radically transformed lives?

There are probably a boat load of reasons, but a responsible follow-up question is, “How can Anglicans change a common perception that they’re not too bothered about mission?” My guess is as good as anyone’s, but here are a few ideas for starters.

1. Read up on our history. I’m not one to beat a denominational drum, but there were great missionaries who were Anglicans that we don’t hear much about today. Sure, we often hear about William Carey (1761-1834), the amazing Baptist missionary, Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), the Independent trail-blazer of inland China, and others but we forget that there were others: St Augustine of Canterbury served on the frontiers of the civilized world, Jackson Kemper (1789-1870) evangelized American frontiers, Henry Martyn (1781-1812) served in India and Persia. If we had time, we could trace the seeds of some indigenous church movements in the Majority World today to Anglican missions several hundred years back.

2. Recognize how vital good leadership is.  We sometimes forget how vital a role bishops play in missions. As Anglicans, we have many great examples both from the past and today. Bishop Azariah (1874-1945) and Bishop Crowther (1809-1891) were pioneer bishops in India and Africa who faced not only challenges from paganism or Hinduism, but also racial discrimination. Bishops today such as Nathan Inyom, Edward Akanya, Moon HIng of Nigeria and Western Malaysia are similarly unsung heros. They have started churches and entire dioceses amongst unreached peoples from Muslim and tribal backgrounds. Bishops can recruit, select, train and empower their best people to serve the nations. They can ensure the gospel is preached in their home diocese, that the faith is defended from heresies, and that the flames of missionary zeal are fanned throughout their jurisdictions.

3, Revere the Lord in worship, but value people too. Take a look at many church websites and you may see more fonts, apses and chancels than the faces of ordinary people. Historically, Anglicans have constructed worship spaces that reflect the greatness, majesty and holiness of their Creator. This is a good thing.  And in an age that favors technology over sacredness, such an Anglican trait has merit, particularly for church architecture. However, there is a downside.

Whatever stripe of Anglican we may be, we tend towards stability, the via media, the predictable. We savor flickering candles during Advent Eucharist, but are uncomfortable when an evangelist speaks with fire in his bones (Jeremiah 20:9). We have panic attacks when the senior warden says there’s no more money to pay to maintain the property. We really don’t want to experience what worship in truth and spirit is without a building (John 4:24). Was it any wonder that during the expansion of the US frontier in the nineteenth century, that the Methodists and Baptists held tent meetings in the desert while the Anglicans remained in East coast chapels? Surely authentic worship inside the sanctuary helps believers to share the Lord’s passionate concern for those outside the church? Maybe we could say that worship is proved true through the mission of the church outside its buildings? Aren’t worship and mission inextricably linked?

Any church that appreciates history, nurtures excellent leadership, cultivates reverential worship, and values people outside its walls will make an impact for missions. You just won’t be able to stop it. However, without these ingredients, all you’ll get inertia, mediocrity or worse. And who wants that?

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“I’m Anglican in my heart”. That’s what a 250 lb., 6 foot 2, balding Christian leader whispered to me last week.

“Guess you’ve heard that one before”, he smiled. He was a self-confessed recovering mega-pastor who now runs a spiritual retreat center on 35 acres.

Well, yes, I’ve heard that line a lot, particularly in non-denominational circles. Burned out by hi-octane mega-ministry, this leader had drunk the Kool-Aid of a Benedictine rule of life (American style).

I had one reflection on this. Why do people associate Anglicanism with the inner life rather than with missions?

Perhaps a steady diet of non sacramental, ahistorical, solipsistic Christianity makes some people hungry for the bread and wine of creeds, confessions, and corporate prayer. Advent can heighten that desire. Maybe after all that there’s no more bandwidth left over to consider what Anglican missions has to offer? With heroes like St Augustine of Canterbury, Henry Martyn, John Wesley, George Whitfield, Henry Venn, Samuel Schereschewsky, Channing Moore Williams, Temple Gairdner and so forth, there’s much that can inspire our global mission efforts.

If we, or anyone, is an Anglican “in my heart”, then we might gently urge them to be Anglican “in my mission”, too. Over the past two hundred years or so, Anglicans have traveled to the ends of the earth to preach the gospel. After all, being Anglican is merely a way, a legitimate way, to be a follower of Christ. We reject legalism and license as we champion grace and beauty. We reject dualism, but embrace both the physical and spiritual.  We seek creation’s redemption as much as the conversion of someone on the frontiers of civilization.

We pray that the Lord’s way be known upon earth: “Thy saving health among all nations”. So why are Anglicans not known for living that out?

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Spielberg’s new movie Lincoln, from the reviews at least, seems to deliver. I know it’s on a list my family and I have to see this Thanksgiving. There’s another reason too.

About a year ago, Roger,  a guy in the men’s Bible study I attend on Friday mornings in a supermarket cafe here in Richmond, VA started to grow his beard. He plays French horn in the Richmond Symphony orchestra, but moonlighted as an extra when Spielberg came to town to shoot his movie. The guys in our study got a kick out his thick bushy beard that reached at least 10 inches from his chin like some weird hairy dinner plate. Maybe we will get a peek at Roger in the movie.

That’s one reason to see it, but perhaps another is to think about Thanksgiving. Honestly, I find it quite hard to be thankful. There’s some guilt about this, knowing I should. Yet, much in our national life, let alone on the international scene and even in my own life makes me ambivalent about gratitude.

If I look back to Lincoln, then I guess I realize life wasn’t exactly a picnic in the 1860′s. How could anyone facing Civil War and slavery dedicate a day for “Thanksgiving  and praise to our beneficent Father who dwells in the heavens”? That’s  pretty sobering.

Or, another example, looking forward, would be the Apostle John. As an exile under a hostile regime, life wasn’t exactly a picnic for him either. However, through John’s writings,  I see our future destiny: a new heaven and earth where our beneficent Father dwells in our  midst forever.

Can we be thankful looking back and thankful for our sure and certain hope in the future even in the midst of circumstances that make us ambivalent at best? Can we?

Sounds good, but what if there aren’t any indigenous Christians in a particular Hindu city or Buddhist village with whom foreigners can partner? My own view is that the Bible commands us to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). In such areas, I believe foreigners can serve as catalysts who  get out of the way once a gospel takes root. As the Lord does this, the foreigner finds new supportive roles that can equip and empower the new believers. I saw this happen in a Muslim context in North Africa a few years’ ago. It was quite beautiful.

But there’s another issue. I can’t help thinking that God doesn’t really want one part of his body to be busy while another part kicks back, writes a check and is done with global missions. Using churches in North America only as ATM machines doesn’t seem good stewardship. Yes, financial support has a role, but isn’t there a lot more to global engagement in missions? Hasn’t the Lord given an amazing array of gifts throughout His body that He wants to get used? Leaders from the US can learn fresh insights about leadership from leaders in the Global South. Leadership is a gift. If we Westerners can humble ourselves to learn from our brothers and sisters in Christ overseas, could we not be refreshed by their faith and obedience in discipleship and evangelism?  Are there under-used spiritual gifts and talents in Western churches that could complement mission efforts of our brothers overseas?

All this is a whole lot more messy than stroking a check. It’ll take the Holy Spirit and a lot of discernment and a lot of time for foreign and indigenous Christians to figure out, but it can and should be done. Don’t different parts of the body belong one to another (Romans 12:5)?

Werner Mischke has done the church a great favor with his curriculum, “The Beauty of Partnership: Equipping Followers of Jesus Christ For Healthy Cross-Cultural Partnerhips to Bring Hope to the Peoples of the World” www.beautyofpartnership.org. I encourage mission leaders to explore it.

So, when it’s time for your church mission committee to approve the line items on your church budget,  don’t re-elect the policies of “Just send a check” or “Keep the money for local missions.” Instead,  switch things up. Allocate funds for your leadership to take a vision trip to explore partnership with indigenous believers. Set aside funds for training materials for new indigenous believers amongst an unreached people group. Develop a blue-sky fund for church planting amongst a minority. If we’re “individually members one of another”, then let’s implement policies that reflect that in 2013.

We were in the Hindu belt of North India where religious, political and community leaders don’t take too kindly to conversion. Though the constitution guarantees religious freedom, when it comes down to the details, life is messy. “Just remember,” my colleague told me, “when the local police show up to inquire about Christian meetings in Hindu villages, they understand what the law says, but there’s something in their hearts that says “I’m a Hindu and this person has just converted to become a Christian”.”

In spite of opposition and occasional persecution, the Church is growing in some areas of the Hindu belt. And, I guess, it was my friend’s nonchalant description of numerous new fellowships, evangelists, training courses and so forth that prompted me to ask what role a foreign Christian really does have today in such situations.

The days of colonial missionary work are long gone. Back in 1910, two-thirds of all Christians lived in Europe, but that’s shrunk to a quarter in 2010. Whereas in Africa in 1910, a mere 2% of all Christians found there home there, but a hundred years’ later nearly one quarter of all Christians in the world live there. With the rise of the Global South church, I wonder what a godly response should be.

Well, I asked my Indian colleague what he thought outsiders should be doing. “There are five areas”, he answered, “Prayer, materials, training, finance, and infrastructure.” Clearly, he knew in his own mind how outsiders fit in. Foreigners can serve supportive roles while indigenous believers do front line mission and ministry. Simple?

His response certainly makes sense, particularly if there are indigenous believers in a particular area of the Hindu belt, or other belts, too. But what if there aren’t any? Should foreign Christians then enter as front-line missionaries? Should they serve as catalysts until indigenous believers emerge? Stay tuned for next week…

I have yet to meet a church that didn’t support missionaries financially. Though financial assistance is absolutely critical, a missionary can be much more to a local church than a budgetary item. Finding ways for the average person in your pews to come alongside your missionaries will benefit not only those who give, but also the wider church, and it will make your missionary more effective on the field.

1. Enlist folks from your congregation to be the advocates for the missionary who can coordinate support and make needs known to the congregation;
2. Offer a room in your home for the missionary to store their possessions;
3. Ask if the missionary needs help filing taxes whilst away;
4. Have the Sunday School classes focus on the missionary’s area of service. Learn some of the language, culture, and needs;
5. Volunteer to babysit the missionary’s children so that they can have time away before re-entry to the field;
6. Send care packages, birthday cards, and other items for their wish list;
7. Offer to send out their communications;
8. Although the aim is a warm, supportive relationship, it should also be one of accountability.Get references, verify their call, and request ministry reports;
9. Offer friendship. Invite them to a meal or out for coffee;
10. Find a tangible way to serve the missionary. For example, one missionary we know works with orphans in a cold climate. Folks from her supporting church have a knitting ministry and send hats and gloves to the children she serves;
11. Send a short-term team to visit them on the field. Find out how the team could best serve. If sending a team would be too much of a burden, send one or two leaders instead;
12. Get technical:  do Skype calls with the church; ask for video footage, photos, etc.;
13. Are there doctors in the congregation who can help advise in medical situations;
14. Commission the missionary during a service, put on a church meal with relevant ethnic food, consider taking a photo that the missionary can take on the field;
15. Pray regularly for the missionary during the service, small groups, etc.;
16. Be sensitive to your returning missionary. Culture shock is unnerving. Perhaps counselors and friends in the congregation can lend an ear and help them process their experiences.